How could you identify whether a particular bacterial sample contained specimens with mycolic acid-rich cell walls?

By the application of an acid-fast staining technique.

Explanation:

Mycolic Acid Cell Wall:

Mycolic acid is a long chain fatty acid abundantly found in the cell wall of of bacterium belonging to the genus Mycobacterium e.g. Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Mycolic acids comprise about 40 to 60% of the mycobacterial cell wall. These bacteria are called acid fast bacteria because their cell walls cannot be stained with Gram staining technique.

Mycolic acid makes the mycobacterial cell wall so thick that regular Gram stains cannot penetrate it. Therefore, a more advanced acid fast staining technique is used.

Acid Fast Staining:

Acid fast staining is a differential staining technique comprising of the Ziehl-Neelsen technique and the Kinyoun technique. Both involve the use of carbolfuchsin stain, a lipid soluble, phenolic dye that penetrates through the mycobacterial cell wall. The cell wall retains the dye even after decolorization.

After the application of carbolfuchsin, a counter stain methylene blue is used that stains the non-acid fast bacteria without mycolic acid cell walls.

this protocol provides a detailed procedure for co-immunoprecipitation (co-ip) to identify protein–protein interactions.

it provides an alternative energy pathway for the reaction to proceed.

a catalyst is a substance that speeds up the rate of a chemical reaction but is not consumed during the course of the reaction.

catalysts increase the rate of reaction without being used up. they do this by lowering the activation energy needed. with a catalyst, more collisions result in a reaction, so the rate of reaction increases. different reactions need different catalysts.

a catalyst works by providing an alternative reaction pathway to the reaction product. the rate of the reaction is increased as this alternative route has a lower activation energy than the reaction route not mediated by the catalyst.