phl@drusd.UUCP (LavettePH) (01/24/85)
Hey, do any of you pros have an opinion on how an amateur can sterilize his
glassware to a level that is acceptable when he is working in a home-basement
lab?
I have a rather old screw-top pressure cooker that I use when I'm sterilizing
my agar tubes and dishes, but I stay out of the kitchen as much as I can except
when I have to go in and turn the heat off. I don't want to use alcohol because
a little of it goes a long way in destroying a living culture. I've tried the
oven at max temp for a half hour with good results, but it seems to take for-
ever.
I guess the question is - Can you sterilize glassware in a microwave oven in,
say fifteen minutes, to a degree that is equal to or better than the rest of
the stuff sterilized in rather primitive conditions? I've tried it but I have
had no luck in isolating whether the contamination I wind up with comes from
my lab bench, my someday-it-will-explode-and-take-me-with-it autoclave or my
glass tools. I'm betting on the bench so I take real care there, but I still
want as clean an operation as I can get. I can flame-sterilize some things,
but pipettes,etc.,are a real problem.
Thanks, for your help.
- Phil Lavette
p.s. A while back you pros gave me quite a bit of help in finding good
reference books and suppliers. I've kept that info and added some
of my own and any cellar-biologist who wants a summary just has to
ask. Please include your USnail address because I still don't fully
understand the cyberbabble that gets email from me to you and I can
print out a copy of what I have and send it to you without tying up
the net.ems@amdahl.UUCP (E. Michael Smith) (01/28/85)
> > Hey, do any of you pros have an opinion on how an amateur can sterilize his > glassware to a level that is acceptable when he is working in a home-basement > lab? I'm not a pro, but that doesn't stop me from having an oppinion ( in the true tradition of the net...) I think the oven is your best bet. Given my 'experiments' with baked chicken left in the oven overnight, it seems that the environment stays reasonably sterile. It should be that glassware would be sterile as soon as the surface temperature reached 300 degrees F or so. The biggest risk is in contamination when the door is opened. Also, have you thought of trying acetone as a sterilizer? Evaporates much better than ethanol. Another trick I have used is to use isopropanol to dissinfect/sterilize and then dry in the oven at 250 degrees. Fast and efficient. -- E. Michael Smith ...!{hplabs,ihnp4,amd,nsc}!amdahl!ems Comedo ergo sum The opinions expressed by me are not representative of those of any other person - natural, unnatural, or fictional - and only marginally reflect my opinions as strained by the language.
carter@gatech.UUCP (Carter Bullard) (01/30/85)
I would recommend using UV light. Commercially available "black
lights" will do the trick. Just leave your cleaned glassware
under the light overnight.
And it really, really works.
--
Carter Bullard
ICS, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA 30332
CSNet:Carter @ Gatech ARPA:Carter.Gatech @ CSNet-relay.arpa
uucp:...!{akgua,allegra,amd,ihnp4,hplabs,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!cartermccann@sjuvax.UUCP (mccann) (02/01/85)
I am not really sure that either the UV light bit or the use of an oven at 350 will completely sterilize glassware. First, UV cannot significantly penetrate glass, so this would be useless for sterilizing pipettes and such (also, the UV varies greatly in effectiveness on different types of bacteria and exposure of 'sterilized' glassware after irradiation would initiate photo- reactivation of bacteria not yet dead.) The heating in an oven bit also is not totally effective, since even non-cysting bacteria can survive high temperatures for some time. Your best bet is to go out and but yourself a new pressure cooker because this saves time and will probably do a better job of sterilizing than the other methods. M McCann
royt@gitpyr.UUCP (Roy M. Turner) (02/03/85)
In article <11808@gatech.UUCP> carter@gatech.UUCP (Carter Bullard) writes: >I would recommend using UV light. Commercially available "black >lights" will do the trick. Just leave your cleaned glassware >under the light overnight. > >And it really, really works. > That sounds reasonable, if the stuff you're trying to sterilize is not opaque, and providing that the UV you're using is strong enough to kill a major proportion of the little buggers and not just mutate them. Also, from what little I remember of my microbiology courses, I believe that spores are resistant to UV (and to damn near everything else, too). Roy (My above opinions are the result of a shaky base in microbio, but what do you expect from someone in a computer science department? :-) ) -- Roy Turner (a transplanted Kentucky hillbilly) School of Information and Computer Science Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 ...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!royt