Cell Viability Plating Decision Example

A harvested culture has enough total cells but lower viability than usual.

The example shows how to decide whether the count can still support plating or whether the culture condition should be reviewed first.

Live and dead counts rather than total count alone.

Time between harvest, staining, counting, and plating.

Whether the untreated culture morphology already looked stressed.

Use viable cell concentration for seeding calculations, not total cells.

If viability is unexpectedly low, consider whether the experiment should be delayed, repeated, or documented as a compromised setup.

Seeding by total cell count after viability drops.

Ignoring clumps that distort live/dead counts.

Treating stressed cells as comparable to a healthy control culture.