Laboratories habitually have a huge range of biological samples, chemicals, and solutions that need to be stored properly – be it for the short term or long-term. Nonetheless, the most favourable storage temperature for a particular sample can differ relying upon its proposed use, suspension buffer, and duration. With limited operating costs and lab space, good storage practices are a precious asset to any laboratory. This cold storage guide will offer some useful tips to stick with.
Room temperature (+20°C/+68°F):
Certain biological samples and chemicals can be stored in room temperature, even for long-term storage. This mainly includes tissues that have been preserved in formalin, alcohol, or another preservative solution. You can use these samples for anatomical analysis or histology, but RNA and DNA extracted from these samples would be exceedingly sullied and as such not usable. Any sort of molecular biology study need freezer room storage.
Refrigerated Storage (4°C/40°F):
In labs, refrigerator systems are employed to keep regularly used biological buffers and reagents. This may include specific enzymes and antibodies, buffers for routinely conducted experiments, as well as culture media. Freshly collected tissue biopsies or blood samples can be also kept in refrigerators for short durations, but mustn’t be employed for any long-term storage. Also, many research centres have cold room, that perform as large refrigerators, letting experiments & incubations to be conducted at 4 degree Celsius far more effortlessly.
Ideal for temporary storage, refrigerators are excellent for keeping chemicals that’ll quickly lose veracity with recurrent freeze-thaw cycles, as long as they’re used within the time frame recommended by the manufacturer. Also, they can be employed to momentarily store tissue or even DNA/RNA while you wait for a piece of laboratory equipment to become available.
Freezer Storage (-20°C/-4°F):
Standard freezer rooms are excellent for storing biochemical samples and chemicals that aren’t unwavering at warmer temperature. Found in majority of laboratories in the form of refrigerator/freezer combos, they’re ideal for a lab with confined space. Usually these freezers are employed for more short-term freezer storage of samples that are regularly used, or required for a looming experiments. This includes aliquots of antibodies, peptides, RNA and DNA employed for daily reactions, alongside tissues that have been adjourned in the right stabilizing solutions prior to freezing. Nonetheless, more long-term storage will need an ultra-low temperature freezer.
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