PCR Tube Strip Labeling Tip
by
The very first things I ordered when I officially joined my lab were multi-colored Sharpies and a rainbow of lab tape. The color gives me a little bit of joy in a world of black, white, grey, and beige. Yes, I am the kind of person who wants tube racks in every different color. Yes, I am the kind of person who gets excited to use multicolored eppis. Yes, I am the kind of person who enjoys adding NaOH to phenol red solutions just to watch the yellow contrast with the bright pink.
Yes, I am the kind of person to realize this sounds stupid, but color also serves me as an organization system. I can quickly identify what I need even when my life is not the most organized (which, uh, it usually isn’t) and when I am in a hurry (which, uh, I usually am). If I need to grab my P200, I don’t need to waste precious seconds picking up each pipet and reading the labels, I just grab the green one. When looking through 81 tubes in the freezer box to find anti-MAP, I know it has a purple label, because all of my primary antibodies have purple labels, while secondaries have red labels.
Along with my desire to make everything technicolor, I also look for ways to simplify my life where ever possible. Anyone who has ever PCR’d before is familiar with those teeny tiny tubes and how difficult they are to label. You could use the numbers on the tubes themselves, but, oh yeah, they are cloudy-clear on a clear background in a font size that wouldn’t even register in a word processing program, which isn’t exactly ideal for legibility. The lids are off limits as they get removed, and any writing on the parts of the tube that make contact with the block is susceptible to being rubbed off. That leaves you with a space a few square millimeters; even using finest Sharpies with the most immaculate handwriting, writing more than a couple of letters introduces ambiguity. So I applied my favorite lab tool – color – to the problem, and now labeling my PCR strips requires the fine motor skills of a toddler. Assuming you can also scribble, you’ll never have to struggle with labeling them again!
