Toothpicks for PCR

[Michael Cooley]

Alexander Kraev" bckraev at aeolus.ethz.ch (bckraev at wawona) wrote:
: Dear netters,
: I saw Paul's long post about toothpicks and decided to finally confide
: that I have never never thought of using such stuff for picking colonies.
: Instead, I always used METAL NEEDLES, bought in local do-it-yourself stores.
: The local shop sells them at SFr 3.50 for 100. Moreover, they can be REUSED!
: During colony picking, drop them into 1% Deconex, store at least 30', wash
: with a stream of water, rinse in EtOH and dry. Mine are reused about 15 times
: before somebody forgets them in Deconex over weekend and they get rusty.
: Not once any cross contamination has been observed, and the success rate is
: nearly 100%. So, forget about toothpicks and switch to high-tech stuff, the
: Metal Needles! Cheers,
: *************************************************************************
: Alexander Kraev, Ph.D.                 Internet: bckraev at aeolus.ethz.ch
: Lab. of Biochemistry III               Phone: 0041-1-632-31-47
: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology  FAX:   0041-1-632-12-13
: Universitaetstr.16
: CH-8092 Zurich
: "Some ideas are obscure not because they are complex, but because they 
:  are excluded from our circle of comprehension" - Kozma Prutkov


We just ran a side by side comparison of toothpick vs yellow tip and 
found no inhibition of the  PCR reaction. 


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