The Importance of Sterile Technique
by
Messing up your own experiments is one thing. Messing up an entire lab’s is a whole nother. One of the easiest ways to make a large group of people furious with you instantly is to contaminate the incubator. It’s the equivalent of lighting their experiments on fire – they should be mad. The bad part is, it’s your fault. The good part is, it’s completely avoidable…
You’ll know you’ve got proper sterile technique when you bring a non-scientist friend to lab and they nearly pass out watching you split cells… It’s anal and boring, but it’s an absolutely essential skill to master. The first step is to understand the main sources of contamination and how to avoid them and in this video, I’ve tried to cover them.
To help illustrate some of the principles, we’ve employed the “cooking show cam” to provide a bird’s eye view of what’s taking place. If you just can’t stomach the thought of practicing sterile technique, you may want to spend that time practicing a martial art – if you keep contaminating the incubator, you’re going to need some self-defense…
