Elimination of M13?

[George Rutherford]

In article <6277ca$6qk$1 at nargun.cc.uq.edu.au>, Paul R. Rohde
<P.Rohde at mailbox.uq.edu.au> wrote:

> hessling at toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jutta_He=DFling?=)
writes: > Hi,
> > I am working with M13 phage and wonder how I could
> > decontaminate used plasticware. Is 70% ethanol
> > sufficient?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Jutta.
> 
> Ambion's RNaseZap cleans plasticware (and pippettes) pretty well.
> Rinse twice with water after.
> 
> People often clean surfaces with with EtOH to get rid of contamination.
> This surprises me as Nucleic acids etc are precipited with EtOH so it 
> shouldn't destroy them at all!  Water would be better.
> 70%  EtOH is good for killing cells.

I agree, but what I normally do to eliminate residual nucleic acids is: 1)
treat with 1N HCl for an hour 2) rinse 2X with water 3) treat with 3%
hydrogen peroxide for an hour 4) rinse 3X with DEPC-treated water. This is
probably overkill, but i've never had any problems.

George