BE.109:Lab tour

There are six stations for you and your lab partner to visit on your lab tour today. Some will be guided tours with a TA or faculty there to help you and others are self-guided, leaving you and your partner to try things on your own. Your visit to each station will last 10-15 minutes. It doesn’t matter which station you visit first but you must visit them all before you leave today. Your lab practical next time will assess your mastery of each station.

Introduction to pipetting

(Guided)

Someone will show you how to use your pipetmen and then you will use them to dilute a blue dye (0.01% Xylene Cyanol).

1. If you have never used pipetmen then you should practice by pipeting 800, 80 and 8 ul of the 0.01% XC stock into eppendorf tubes. XC is not hazardous but it will stain your clothes. Pipet each volume three times and visually inspect how well the volumes match.
2. Using your P20, measure 10, 15 and 20 ul of the 0.01% XC stock solution into the bottom of three cuvettes. Using your P1000, add water to bring the final volume to 1 ml (=1000 ul).
3. Using your P200, measure 20, 50 and 100 ul of the 0.01% XC stock solution into the bottom of three more cuvettes. Using your P1000, add water to bring the final volume to 1 ml.
4. Using your P1000, measure 100, 200, and 400 ul of 0.01% XC solution into the bottom of three more cuvettes. Add water to bring the final volume to 1 ml.
5. With a gloved hand or with a piece of parafilm over the lip of the cuvette, invert each cuvette several times to thoroughly mix the contents.
6. Visually compare your dilutions to the reference ones. If time permits, you will read the absorbance of your dilutions in the spectrophotometer so do not throw them away.

Introduction to our microscopes

(Guided)

Much of biology examines natural components that are too small to see. Imaging technology took a gigantic step forward in the 1680s when Anton van Leeuwenhoek ground a microscope lens sufficiently fine to see a living cell (a bacteria he had scraped from his teeth!). His microscope had one lens and the image he saw was approximately 250 times its natural size (250X magnification). Compound microscopes, like the ones we have in lab, use a second lens to magnify the image from the first and can increase the total magnification up to 1000X. One of our microscopes is also attached to a beam splitter that allows excitation light to be separated from emitted light. This allows us to perform fluorescence microscopy.

No matter how fine its lens, a light microscope cannot distinguish objects closer than 200 nm. The resolution of light microscopes is limited by both the wavelength of white light (300-700 nm) and the scattering of light by the object it strikes. For better resolution, great lenses must be combined with shorter wavelengths, such as those followed by electrons or lasers, and better ways of focusing the beam such as forcing it to travel through a vacuum or an oil. Linking the microscope to a computer with digital image processing can also enhance its images. The sample itself can also be stained or fluorescently tagged to improve detection of its features.

Conventional Microscope

Fluorescent Microscope

Today you will be shown how to use each of the microscopes in the main lab and you will use them to compare three cell types. You will be asked to focus a sample during the lab practical next week.

Introduction to our "back room" and tissue culture facility

(Guided)

Our lab is beautifully equipped. We have a fume hood for work that generates hazardous vapors. We have a back room where dishes can be washed and material can be decontaminated. The backroom also has an icemaker, a sink with ultrapure water and several CO2 tanks that feed into the incubators in the tissue culture facility.

The tissue culture facility has three hoods with germicidal lamps, six incubators for growing eukaryotic cells, two inverted microscopes, and a tabletop centrifuge. It also has a waterbath for warming up solutions and a refrigerator for keeping them cool.

Today you will be shown how to use the autoclave and what it does. You will also be shown some key features of the tissue culture facility, including the different types of waste disposal containers (for trash, biohazard, sharps). More formal training in tissue culture techniques will occur as part of experimental modules 3 and 4.

Introduction to making solutions

(Self-Guided)

Today you will make 100 ml of a 0.5M sorbitol solution and measure its pH. Making solutions is a fundamental part of being in lab and the success of your experiments is absolutely dependent on doing it correctly and consistently. If you are unclear about any of the following instructions, be sure to ask for help.

Balance

pH meter

Part 1: At the Balance

1. Put on gloves to weigh out solids. This protects you from the chemicals and the chemicals from getting contaminated with anything foreign on your hands. Sorbitol is not a dangerous chemical.
2. Zero the balance with a medium size weigh boat on it. Weigh boats are kept in the drawer under the balance. The marked -> O/T <- will zero (“tare”) the balance and the display should read 0.0000 after taring. Be sure to close the balance doors when taring the balance.
3. Use a spatula to measure 9.1 grams of sorbitol. To measure this, open the balance doors and hold the spatula and chemical over the weigh boat. Begin by adding only a small amount of the powder to the weigh boat. Once you determine how much that weighs, you can add correspondingly more. If you have weighed out too much, you can put some back as long as you have used a clean spatula and a clean weigh boat.
4. Remove the weigh boat with your sorbitol from the balance, gently bend the ends together and pour the contents into a beaker. Tap the back of the weigh boat to loosen any powder that is stuck. The weigh boat can be discarded in the trash since sorbitol is not dangerous.
5. Clean the balance with a brush. Clean the area around the balance with a wet paper towel.

Part 2: Measuring Liquids and Mixing

1. Measure approximately 80 ml of ultrapure water into a 100 ml graduated cylinder. Read the volume in the cylinder by bringing it to eye level to see where the meniscus reaches. Add the water to the beaker with your sorbitol.
2. Gently drop in a magnetic stir bar with a diameter approximately 1/2 that of the beaker. Magnetic stir bars are kept in the drawer below the balance.
3. Put the beaker on the stir plate and turn the stirrer on slowly. The stir bar should spin fast enough to form a vortex in the center of the beaker. You do not want the stir bar to bump around in the beaker since this can break the beaker. If the stir bar is stirring unevenly, then turn off the stir plate, allow the magnetic stir bar to stop, and then start it again.
4. Stir until all the powder is dissolved.
5. Pour the solution back into your graduated cylinder.
6. Add ultrapure water up to 100 ml using a plastic disposable pipet. To open the pipet, hold it in one hand. With the other hand puncture the wrapper by pulling it against the top of the pipet (not the end with the tip!). Put the exposed end of the pipet into the pipet aid or bulb then withdraw the pipet from the rest of the wrapper. Place the tip of the pipet into the ultrapure water and withdraw enough water to “top off” your solution. Dispense the water into your sorbitol by submerging the tip of the pipet into the solution and releasing the water from the pipet. Stop when the graduated cylinder reads 100 ml. Extra water can be discarded into the sink and the used pipet can be discarded in the sharps waste container that is under the bench.

Part 3: Measuring pH

1. Since you will measure the pH of your solution you should pour it back into your beaker and put it on a stir plate. Start the stir bar gently spinning. If you did not have to measure its pH you would move it to a bottle for storage.
2. Remove the pH electrode from the storage solution and rinse it over the waste beaker using distilled water from the wash bottle. A Kimwipe can be used to gently dry the electrode.
3. Place the electrode 1/2 way into the 15 ml conical tube with calibration buffer pH 7.0. Press the “read” button. Wait for the reading to stabilize and note how close it is to pH 7. Press the “read” button again to put the pH meter on standby.
4. Rinse and dry the electrode then place it in your sorbitol solution. Hold the electrode at the edge of the beaker and be careful not to let the stir bar hit (and break!) the electrode. Read the pH of your solution and let one of the teaching faculty know what you have found.
5. Rinse and dry the electrode then return it to the electrode storage solution.
6. Pour the sorbitol solution (but not the stir bar!) down the sink. Rinse the beaker with tap water and return it to the balance area. Dry the stir bar and return it to the drawer.