"FAQ" -electroporation cuvettes, cleaning of.

[Vivian Miao]

In article <1993Mar31.093313.1 at molbiol.ox.ac.uk>, rpgrant at molbiol.ox.ac.uk
wrote:
> 
> I can't find this in the archive anywhere, so apologies for being thick.
> A while ago there was a discussion about cleaning electroporation cuvettes:  
> The upshot was that it could be done, but I don't remember how. I 
> did not save the result of the discussion :(   Could someone give me a clue?

I didn't save the discussion either, although there were good suggestions,
but I wonder if you'd be interested in the way I clean cuvettes after
they've
been used one for electroporating ligation mixes: Rinse out the cuvette
vigorously several times (e.g. 4x) with water,  then rinse it out a couple
of times with ethanol.  (Make sure you put the cap on and invert to rinse
off stuff that might be on the inside of cap).  I decant the ethanol after
the
2nd time, leaving a few drops inside to evaporate during storage in the
fridge
until next use.  That's all.  I number the cuvettes and their caps, and
record
what  DNA I used in them - just in case of trouble, at least I know what
might
be the most likely culprit.  So far I haven't had any problems, and I've
reused some cuvettes 10 times or more.  I'm not sure I would recommend
this perfunctory way of cleaning things when transforming with covalently
closed plasmids, since a little contamination would go a long way, but so
far
with the things I have been doing, it's been OK.  :-)