Lab etiquette

misc

MEETINGS

Unless there are serious extenuating circumstances you should attend all Lab Meetings and Journal Clubs. Regular meetings and discussions are essential to building intellectual capital and a sense of community in the lab.

A. Lab meeting. This is for brainstorming and catchinb up on each other’s work. Bring your lab book and show your actual data.

B. Journal Club. If you are presenting, make certain everyone has the reference well in advance. Everyone who attends should read the paper beforehand and be prepared to discuss it critically.

C. Meeting one-on-one with an advisor or colleague. Bring your lab book, a notepad, and a writing implement. Your advisor will find it personally offensive if you just saunter into his or her office with your hands in your pockets, whistling a merry tune – as if you don’t have any data worth discussing and that nothing you discuss could possibly be worth writing down.

COMMON AREAS

The critical rule for common areas is that you should leave them AT LEAST as clean and orderly as you found them (cleaner and more orderly is acceptable too). If everyone follows this rule, we will all thrive.

A. KEEP THE CHEMICAL WEIGH BENCH CLEAN. If you spill something, clean it up immediately. No excuses. This is more about quality control and public health than about being a neat freak. Wipe up any spilled chemical immediately, even if they are innocuous. Use the brush to keep the balance clean. Yeast extract and other media components are easily aerosolized and can gum up the electronic balance. When possible use a separate balance, preferably in a designated Media Prep Room to weigh them out.

B. COLD ROOM. The cold-room is a workspace with relatively high traffic but no custodial service cleaning. We must keep it clean ourselves. This is particularly important because the cool, damp environment of the cold room is actually a pretty good breeding ground for mold. You heard me: mold. Mold can contaminate columns, protein preps, plates, basically anything that spends a considerable time in the cold room, so help keep it clean by following these simple rules:

  1. Always clean up the cold room bench completely before you leave at night. The possible exception to this rule is when you are running a slow column overnight. Regardless, clean up your mess immediately after you are finished. Otherwise, you may earn a spot in the Mark Dayel Coldroom Cleanup Hall of Fame.
  2. Always take care of your columns as soon as you are finished with them. For FPLC columns wash them with high salt followed by filtered ddH2O and finally filtered 20% ethanol in ddH2O for storage. For open system columns either wash them with high salt and store them in Tris (pH 8.0) plus 0.02% azide or unpack them and discard or store the resin as appropriate. Wash the column immediately (See the first section above on cleaning up).
  3. Multi-use columns may be stored on the rack but only if they are labeled with your name, contents, and date.
  4. Do not store fractions or solutions on the bench. Unlabeled fractions or solutions can be thrown away with no questions asked. If you care about it, label and date it and store it in an appropriate place.
  5. Locate a drawer under the bench to store your materials and label it with yourname. Throw away crap that you don’t need or that has gotten too old.
  6. If you spill anything on the floor or the bench clean it up immediately.Housekeeping does not take care of the coldroom.
  7. NEVER OPEN FLAMMABLE SOLVENTS IN THE COLD ROOM – THEYMAY CAUSE AN EXPLOSION. Do not store explosive solvents in the coldroom even if they have never been opened.

C. DELI CABINET. This is for certain common stocks and for storing proteins on ice that should not be frozen. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR CHANGING THE ICE ON YOUR OWN ICE BUCKET. Do not keep things in here forever. Throw away old stocks and DO NOT MAINTAIN A WATER BUCKET WITH A BUNCH OF MOLDY, FLOATING TUBES.

D. UNDER-COUNTER REFRIGERATORS/FREEZERS. These are for frequently used stocks or materials to be used immediately. They are not for long term storage of reagents. They are also not for long term storage of yeast or bacterial plates. After a while they begin to stink. Human feces is about 70% E. coli by weight. Think about it.

Conserve space. Do not store column fractions (use your drawer in the cold room) and if you are storing protein gels overnight, take them out of the casting stand and wrap them in Saran Wraptm. Label them with your name, date, percentage of acrylimide, and whether it is an extra gel that is fair game. Those are my favorite kind.

E. TISSUE CULTURE ROOM. The tissue culture room is particularly sensitive to sloppy technique, carelessness, and/or failure to clean up after yourself.

CLEAN UP

As above, the critical rule is to clean dirty labware in a timely fashion and to leave it AT LEAST as clean and orderly as you found it (cleaner and more orderly is acceptable too). Below are specific instructions for cleaning commonly used bits of labware.

A. The following items must always be washed , rinsed, and set out to dry immediately after use by the person who used them (this is because they are expensive and delicate or used frequently):

  1. Homogenizers – they are expensive so do not put them on the drying rack. Put them back in the drawer immediately.
  2. Ultracentrifuge tubes and caps - do not use detergent on caps! It will eat away the stylish anodization. You can put the caps directly into the basket in the drawer and let them dry there.
  3. Chromatography columns – wash out the little flex columns as soon as you are finished with them. Use a brush. If you don’t wash them properly the resin will dry down to
    the glass and never come off. Dry them in the rack and put them away. For really big columns, wash them, drain them briefly and put them away wet. They are expensive and you do not want to break one. Believe me, you do not want to break one.
  4. Cuvettes – wash them with the cuvette washer, wipe down the outside, and replace them in the case. The preferred order of solvents is: water, ethaol, water.
  5. SDS PAGE gel rigs. Rinse the gel box and electrode jig with hot water and let them drain. Wash the plates immediately or let them soak in the container by the sink. DO NOT leave disassembled rigs on the bench or by the sink.

B. The following items must be completely removed by scraping, rinsing or brushing from all glass- and plasticware before putting it on the dishwashing cart.

  1. Tape or any other label. Don’t argue. Scrape it off.
  2. Any biological waste – e.g. blood, serum, tissue culture cells, egg whites.
  3. Poisons. This includes ACRYLAMIDE, AZIDE, and ETHIDIUM BROMIDE. Deposit them in the appropriate receptacle and wear gloves to rinse the glassware. DO NOT pass dirty glassware on to the glass washer.
  4. Radioactivity. If you contaminated a piece of glassware, follow the recommended procedure for decontamination and then check to make sure it is not hot before passing it on to the glass washer.

C. If you have used a beaker or cylinder for water or some very simple and innocuous buffer then just rinse it out well with distilled water and put it up to dry. Save the planet.

D. Place glass pipettes into the dirty pipette holders with the TIPS UP. This prevents breakage and saves time, money, skin, and blood.

E. Keep the sink area clean. Wipe up spilled water, especially on the floor. Keep the green rubber netting arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way. And NEVER dump insoluble or polymerizable material into the sink. It should be obvious but here are some specific examples.

  1. Starch packing peanuts (dissolve them in a beaker before pouring them into the sink).
  2. Agar (hot liquid or cool solid).
  3. Polymerized acrylimide
  4. Toothpicks or pipette tips (!!!)

EQUIPMENT

A. If a piece of equipment breaks or malfunctions while you are using it, you are responsible for repairing it or at least informing a person responsible for that piece of equipment. If you break a small piece of equipment or use the last of a common stock you are responsible for ordering a replacement or putting it on the order list. There is no particular shame in breaking a piece of equipment but failing to fix it, or report it, or (god help you) covering it up is a major offense. Don’t do it. It will go very hard with you.

B. You may not use any piece of equipment until you have read and understood the instruction manual and had its operation explained by an experienced user. NO EXCEPTIONS.

C. Personal equipment. Each person in the lab should have the following items on his or her bench.

  1. auto-pipetter
  2. Set of pipettemen – P-20, P-200, P-1000 3. Bunsen burner and striker
  3. Water and ethanol squeeze bottle

If you do not have one or more of these, find a spare in the lab or order it. Label them with your name and the name of the lab. Keep track of them and take care of them. NEVER TAKE A PIECE OF EQUIPMENT FROM ANOTHER PERSON’S BENCH. This is pure laziness and it leads to the worst kind of chaos in the lab. If you are doing an experiment and require more than one P-20 or more than one burner, ask one of your labmates if you may borrow hers. When you are done, return it promptly, preferably along with an appropriate thank you gift. Maybe a nice piece of chocolate or a finger sandwich. You must follow this rule carefully or we are doomed to live in a hell of our own making. This rule also applies to consumables like pipette tips or glass pipettes. If you run out, go get some from the stockroom. Not from your neighbor. Do you hear me?

D. Centrifuges.

  1. Always put the lid on the rotor of the Eppendorf centrifuges. Otherwise they make a horrible noise that interferes with the brain waves of your bay mates and makes them want to kill you with a spoonula.
  2. Be sure you know the maximum speed for each rotor and tube type and that you never exceed that speed. Always record your ultracentrifuge runs in the log book, include the serial number of the rotor you use.
  3. Never set ultracentrifuge rotors down on a hard surface, you can scratch ordislodge the speed sensor ring. Use one of the attractive rotor pads provided foryour convenience.
  4. To turn off an ultracentrifuge after a run:
    • a. close the lid
    • b. turn on the vacuum
    • c. set the temperature to something between 25 and 40° C
    • d. when the centrifuge has come up to temperature, turn off the vacuum and vent the chamber. Actually open the door to make certain that there is no vacuum and then turn off the power.
    • There are two reasons for this protocol. (1) Turning off the power with a vacuum in the chamber can suck oil from the pump into the chamber and make a frightful mess. (2) Venting a centrifuge and leaving it cold causes condensation in the chamber and in the vacuum lines and leads to poor vacuum performance.

E. Please keep all the parts of a piece of equipment (bolts, wing nuts, widgets etc.) together in the same place. If there are lots of small pieces that go together put them into a labeled Ziploctm bag.

F. Immediately upon receiving a piece of equipment fill out and return the warranty and regestration cards. File the documentation and instruction manuals in a safe place.

G. Do not loan out equipment unless you ask the PI and make sure the borrower sign out the item. Certain items are so important, precious, or heavily used that they should never leave the lab. These include.

  1. Fluorimeter cuvettes
  2. Homogenizers
  3. Protein or DNA gel rigs.
  4. Microscope objectives (never ever!!!)
  5. Ultracentrifuge rotors

CHEMICALS

A. For most molecular biology and protein biochemistry work you must make your own stock solutions. DO NOT take stock solutions from other people’s benches. (a) You don’t know if they are any good, and (b) you are being a filthy parasite living off the work of others. Shame on you. Shame. Get out of my sight!

B. Whenever you make a stock solution include the following information on the label.

  1. Intended concentration (e.g. 1 M KCl)
  2. Actual amount of solute and actual volume of solvent (e.g. 74.6 gm/1 L ddH2O) 3. pH (where applicable)
  3. Date made
  4. Your name or initials
  5. Something labeled “Salt Solution” or “Bead Buffer” is very dangerous, even if it is your personal stock. You may alter the protocol so that the old “Salt Solution” isn’t the same as the new. For example, there are three very different buffers all called “Phosphate Buffered Saline” (PBS). Simply labeling a bottle “PBS” is useless. Don’t be lazy. Also when you need to make more buffer you will waste a lot of time looking up the components in your lab book or protocol manual. If you have the components and their concentrations and amounts on the bottle you can make it up quickly when you need it.

C. For common lab stock solutions, if you consume (or nearly consume) the last of a stock then for the love of god refill the stock and relabel it, or notify the person who is responsible for that stock solution so they can refill it. If you are responsible for a lab stock then keep an eye on it and remake it as soon as you (or anyone else) notice that it is low.

D. Toxic liquid wastes (acids, organic solvents) must be stored in bottles and picked up by Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S). DO NOT DUMP DOWN THE DRAIN.

E. When you receive a shipment of chemicals immediately write the date and name of the lab on the container and then put it in the appropriate place (chemical bench, freezer, etc.).