By ignorance and staff's mistake our labs' -80C Freeze and -20C Freeze were off from last 3 days, I wanted to know at which extent our samples, kits & chemicals would have been impacted and in which manner? I mean to ask that how to assess the harm we have been impacted by this unfortunate event.
Please give your valuable suggestions and share your experiences (if any)? And what can be done to reduce the loss.
Thanks everyone.
What was the temperature in the -80ºC when it was found and turned on? Same question for -20ºC? Ans what were the contents of those?
Abhijeet Singh
The temperature started decreasing from 29 degree Celsius, the cabin temperature was 5.6 degree Celcius within 2 minutes and the Hx-temperature was noted -3.5 deg Celcius...i am not sure what exactly this Hx-temp is...its now 2hrs but still -80 temperature couldn't be resumed (image attached).
Contents were from majorly 3 categories, namely BIOLOGICAL SAMPLES (blood/serum/tissue/sputum samples; cell lines);KITS & CHEMICALS: PCR-related kits and chemicals; protein-markers and IEF-strips; Blot-related chemicals; and PURIFIED NUCLEIC ACIDS & PROTEINS: cDNA in batches; purified proteins and so many other chemicals actually list is quite long.
Kindly suggest me sir....to undo the losses at least at some extent.
If you mean +29ºC, then I would say it was not good, and hard to access the damage. For reagents, I don't think it would be something of huge damage like kits or other chemical. Note that I am not saying that this might have no effect on reagents, but they might still work. And can easily be checked in a normal PCR-assay (polymerase etc.)
The most concerning thing is the sample and I can't comment on it. It also depends what was the aim of those samples. If it is for DNA or protein based analysis, you can expect minor/small degradation/damage, and it would not be huge impact. But, if the samples were for any expression based analysis, I would highly recommend to not use those samples for RNA analysis.
Abhijeet Singh
Thank you so much Sir, for your suggestions. Yes, the temp decreasing was started from +29 deg Celsius. For, RNA thing what I am getting is that we can't use the extracted RNA-batches but we can use the cDNA....is it so sir....am i getting it right?
Secondly sir, I forgot to mention that we had also the COVID+ve nasal swab samples....can we use these samples or not? Kindly suggest.
I think you can still use cDNA and hopefully there has not been much damage there.
I am not an expert on COVID and I prefer not to comment anything on those samples.
Abhijeet Singh
Thank you Sir, for your continuous concern and support.
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