In a cell culture lab, few extra minutes of organization can go a long way in keeping creating a sterile environment for your cells and enhance your productivity.
Labeling Flasks
It is a good practice to label all your cell culture flasks with your name, type of cells, passage number and experimental details. This is particularly useful when there are multiple users for an incubator. This not only helps in keeping a record of your experiments but could also prevent cross-contamination due to accidental mixing of the flasks. Always keep your flasks in a different shelf or corner to enable clear distinction. Unlabeled and unused flasks should be discarded to avoid any confusion.
De-Cluttering Biosafety Cabinets
Laminar safety hoods are not storage cabinets for your plasticware. Excessive Stuff in the hood will interfere with the flow of laminar air and contribute to contamination. Moreover, it makes it difficult to work in the space and can increase chances of spills in the work area. Only required autoclaved material should be entered in a hood.
Keep your cells housed for longest
All preparation should be performed beforehand to ensure that your cells stay in the incubator for the longest time. Prepare the hood and keep all media and reagents ready before removing the culture flasks from the incubator. Cells are in a comfort zone of 37 degrees and 5% Co2. While handling multiple flasks, work in batches so that the cells are not outside their comfort zone for a long time. Also, all media and buffers should be at 37 degrees before contact with cells.
Sterilization routine
Follow a routine for weekly or monthly sterilization of the incubators, culture lab, and all other equipment. Fix days for cleaning the interiors and exteriors of incubators and fumigating the lab. Preventive sterilization can keep your lab contamination-free. Similarly UV treatment for your hood before and after work will prepare it for the next user.
Validating cells
Only authenticated cell lines and primary cultures should be introduced in a culture lab. Microbiological and mycoplasma testing should be a part of cell culture lab SOP to prevent any contamination. This also ensures that all experimental results are unmanipulated by any contaminating agent. Kosheeka is a supplier of high quality validated primary cultures that are subjected to strict quality control measures. Check out our diverse range of tissue-specific cells now!