Is it ok to use water for injection (WFI) instead of ddh2o for molecular biology work, such as pcr or dna purification?
What do you mean by "water"? If you are referring to reverse osmosis purified water such as from a Millipore device or similar, then yes that would usually be fine to substitute for ddH2O, in fact my lab rarely used ddH2O. However if you are talking about plain tap water, then most likely not. There can be relatively high concentrations of salt, calcium or many other things (not to mention chlorine) in most tap water.
It is certainly OK, but probably a waste of money. Water for injection is guaranteed pyrogen (endotoxins)-free, which is not a worry for most molecular biology applications. Distilled or reverse osmosis water is fine; prior autoclaving takes care of inactivating nucleases.
To Josephat Bungei : water for injection is pure, sterile, pyrogen-free water that can be used to dissolve powdered drugs such as antibiotics prior to injection. This can be verified by consulting the web pages of suppliers. You are presumably confusing with physiological saline, which contains 0.9 % NaCl.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Asia
- India