Why is it important to stain youngcultures of bacteria with

the grain stain?

Because older cultures of gram-positive bacteria tend to lose their ability to retain crystal-violet in the peptidoglycan of their cell walls and can be confused with gram-negative bacteria.

Explanation:

Gram staining is used to differentiate between two major groups of bacteria. Gram-positive and gram-negative, these bacteria differ in the amount of peptidoglycan in their cell walls. Gram-positive bacteria have a higher amount of peptidoglycan, which absorbs the violet crystal complex used in gram staining, staining them purple/violet. Old cultures of gram-positive bacteria tend to lose the ability to retain the violet crystal and are stained by safranine, staining them red/pink and appear to be gram-negative.