User:Brian P. Josey/Notebook/2009/09/14

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Ethanol Cleaned Flow Cells
Today was a fairly uneventful day for me. Essentially all I did today was clean dishes and made cleaned flow cells for Andy. This doesn't sound like a lot, but I am in for only two and a half hours on Mondays. Andy asked for four that were not specially cleaned, and four that were cleaned with both ethanol and water. The procedure for making the ones that were cleaned with ethanol is essentially the same as for any other flow cell. The only differences are:


 * Wear gloves to prevent contamination.
 * Rinse both sides of the slide and cover slip with ethanol for a few seconds.
 * Wipe with a chemical tissue.
 * Rinse again with water for ~10-15 sec.
 * Wipe again with a chemical tissue.
 * Remove all excess moisture by blowing nitrogen gas on the slide and cover slip.
 * Check for smudges, if there are not any make the flow cell as usual, if not repeat.

Also to help encourage my habit of writing down all the procedures in the lab, I also made some 1% by volume Alconox solution, the detergent we use to clean dishes. To do this, add 1.5 mL of Alconox, a white powder, to 150 mL of water. It takes a while to create the solution, so shake well real quickly and then let it sit. All of the powder should go into solution within an hour or two.


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