Re: ProtIsolation: dirty tubes

David A. Schooley (schooley@unr.edu)
Thu, 4 Feb 1999 13:39:40 -0800

I will repost an extremely useful recommendation from Gary Hathaway
on this bulletin board regarding the cleanliness of Corning Costar tubes
after a methanol rinse. Joe Hull in my group compared recovery of insulin
stored in three different 'siliconized' tubes, from Corning, National
Scientific, and Continental Lab Products, after washing these tubes with
methanol. Of course the methanol removes most or all of the "siliconizing"
reagent. After a methanol wash, only the Corning tubes did not "eat"
insulin- it would disappear from solution with the National Scientific, and
Continental Lab tube. I realize that this does not apply to MS
cleanliness- something we need to check- but Gary is right that these
Corning Costar tubes, "prelubricated", are a great product.

>At 2:24 PM -0700 9/29/98, David A. Schooley wrote:
>>Dear Colleagues,
>>
>>
>> This has pointed out the wisdom of washing tubes with organic
>>before using them- one of my questions is whether anyone knows of
>>availability of an apparatus for vapor-phase degreasing of tubes and
>>pipette tips with an organic solvent such as methanol, making this an
>>easier job than manual washing?
>>
>>David,
> We've been using CORNING COSTAR 1.7 ml prelubricated microcentrifuge
>tubes, cat. no.3207 distributed by VWR. We set them up 24 tubes to a rack
>and alternately wash with methanol from a wash bottle and Milli-Q water. To
>make the emptying go faster, we connect a pasteur pipet to a sidearm flask
>and water aspirate the contents. After the last MeOH rinse, we invert on
>Kimwipes until dry. Then cap and cover the whole thing with plastic wrap.
>Hope this helps.
>regards
>>
>

Oops- no Gary signature here- maybe this was a personal send?

David

David A. Schooley
Dept. of Biochemistry/330
Univ. of Nevada
Reno, NV 89557
schooley@med.unr.edu
tel: (775) 784-4136; fax (775) 784-1419