[Drosophila] Injectmatic tas

[Kevin Cook]

Antoine--

I purchased an Injectamatic Sleeper TAS a few years ago from Genesee 
Scientific.  It works exactly as described.  My impression is that 
flies wake up slightly more slowly than when they are anesthetized 
with carbon dioxide (though much more quickly than ether anesthesia), 
but I never found it to be a problem.  I never had any reason to 
think that nitric oxide was any more deleterious than carbon dioxide, 
but I did not do any kind of careful study.

My only complaint about using the Sleeper unit is that the directions 
indicate that it must be used intermittently for no more than one 
minute at a time.  I'm not quite sure why this is, or exactly how the 
inventors expected users to apply this rule.  The Sleeper comes with 
a foot pedal to control a pump in the unit.  I simply pressed the 
foot pedal for awhile, stopped for a bit, pressed it some more, 
etc.  In this way, I could keep flies asleep for several minutes.  I 
don't think I hurt the gas generator doing this (though I burned out 
a solenoid valve that I had to replace for ~$30).  It took awhile to 
get used to pressing the pedal rhythmically. Maybe the inventors 
could provide some guidance on this issue.  I never asked and maybe I 
was doing things wrong......

The pump makes it more noisy than using CO2 and your labmates might 
not like listening to it, but it's a reasonable alternative.

Kevin

__________________________________________________________
Kevin Cook, Ph.D.               Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center
Department of Biology           http://flystocks.bio.indiana.edu
Jordan Hall 142
Indiana University              812-856-1213
1001 E. Third St.               812-855-2577 (fax)
Bloomington, IN  47405-7005     kcook from bio.indiana.edu