how do you assess the level of sterility of your cell culture working bench (lamniar flow) and incubator after a long period of downtime?
Hi Magdalena, first of all clean your devices properly, of course. Then you can simply use contact plates for the hood. To check for in/down flow rates and particulate counts you need professionals unless you have the apropriate device for that. The incubator will be home for all kind of microorganisms sooner or later - just clean regularly. Best wishes, Nico
Dear Magdalena , We do regular sterility testing for the cell culture laminar air flows in our lab by placing bacteriological and fungal nutrient agar plates in the hood while air is flowing and left it for 10 min , placed in 37 incubator for 46-72 hours and check if there is any colony appear on the plate or not. This procedure is simple and great for us.
For the incubator , I agree with Nico , we do frequent cleaning only.
Best Regards
Yes regular cleaning with 75% EtOH (both incubator and work place) with exposure to UV light (work place) will be sufficient for achieving sterility. As for the air flow i agree with Mohamed that is good idea.
usually your university / lab institution has a maintenance contract with the supplier of the laminar flows. they test the flows e.g. once a year for contamination and then provide you with detailed protocols how to clean your hood.
thanks all for the kind answers.
of course, cleaning, UV, professionals measuring the particle concentration is... should be standard. lukas, unfortunately the university does nothing like that. we have to do it by ourselves, hence also my question which different methods/strategies people have. there are specific plates from roth to determine load of proliferatively active funghi and bacteria but they are quite costly. thanks mohamed, I probably give this one a try.
do you guys think a UV-based desinfection of the entire room (its mandatory for S2 labs) does make a significant difference?
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