Molecular Biology Laboratory Practice Trivia Day!

Today I Learned:
1) Warning: detailed molecular biology laboratory practice trivia inbound.

One thing that comes up a lot while cloning is checking PCRed parts. Today I learned a way to speed up gel loading when there are a lot of parts, using a multichannel pipette. You make a stock of loading dye in an 8-tube PCR strip, then use the multichannel pipette to load a small amount of loading dye into your samples super quickly (about 5 uL will work in any reasonably-sized PCR). You’ll still have to manually load the individual samples, but it’s still well worth it to avoid having to individually mix all the dyes. Make sure to do this step before running your samples through PCR cleanup — that way the dye will come out in the cleanup step.

2) Also molecular biology trivia — today I learned how to use a repeater pipette. Also super-useful (if quite expensive). I hear they’re not as accurate as normal pipettes… but they’re plenty good enough to set up PCR. They do tend to be a bit wasteful, though, as they have a habit of picking up excess liquids.

3) And to round out a day of molecular biology — Phusion 2x master mix (for PCR) is stable on the bench for hours. Possibly days. Not months, though. (also, most antibiotics will apparently break down in incubator conditions over 2-3 days? Can anyone confirm or deny?)