We have many samples to be homogenized and the material need to be washed between samples to avoid DNA contamination between them. It is hard to effectively bleach all the materials. I did some research but couldn't find an alternative effective method. Any ideas?
Water is often used to clean homogenizer tips, however if you like, you can be a little more extreme with your cleaning.
First off, the idea behind using water to clean the homogenizer is to simply shake off any DNA (or RNA) and then dilute the heck out of it until there is so little that it is essentially undetectable.
Alternatively, you can attempt to destroy any nucleic acid present on the homogenizer by using a series of washes. My lab has used the following appproach with success: submerge the homogenizer (the blade end only of course!) in 10ml of 0.4M NaOH at full speed for about 15 seconds, follow this with 10ml of 70% etOH for 15 seconds. Wipe clean with a kim-wipe (or similar), or depending on what your workflow is, you can also follow this with a nuclease-free water rinse.
While both techniques seem to work, you may feel safer using the sodium hydroxide/ethanol method to clean your tools.
If you are using a tip homogenizer (i.e., OMNI International probe-style homogenizer probe with metal or teflon blades), you can effectively rinse the homogenizer tip in between samples by running the tip twice for 15 seconds in 2 separate aliquots of 40 mL nuclease-free water in 50 mL conical centrifuge tubes. Wipe the tip with Kim-wipes in between and ready to go. This has worked nicely for me. Even 1 aliquot of 40 mL of nuclease-free water seems to work as well to absolutely minimize cross-contamination from sample to sample.
Water is often used to clean homogenizer tips, however if you like, you can be a little more extreme with your cleaning.
First off, the idea behind using water to clean the homogenizer is to simply shake off any DNA (or RNA) and then dilute the heck out of it until there is so little that it is essentially undetectable.
Alternatively, you can attempt to destroy any nucleic acid present on the homogenizer by using a series of washes. My lab has used the following appproach with success: submerge the homogenizer (the blade end only of course!) in 10ml of 0.4M NaOH at full speed for about 15 seconds, follow this with 10ml of 70% etOH for 15 seconds. Wipe clean with a kim-wipe (or similar), or depending on what your workflow is, you can also follow this with a nuclease-free water rinse.
While both techniques seem to work, you may feel safer using the sodium hydroxide/ethanol method to clean your tools.
You can also use syringes. For each sample you can use a new and sterile syringe with a new needle. But if you have too many samples that need to be homogenized than it could get a little bit expensive and a waste of material. But with this method you will have definitely no cross-contamination. And it is fast because you don't have to clean the material between samples.
they are a bit expensive but if the samples are small then pellet pestles are disposable grinders that fit inside 1.5ml or 0.75 ml eppendorf style tubes. The pestles are disposable but could be cleaned with HCl as they are plastic. Sold by Anachem in the uk but probably available from suppliers everywhere
https://www.anachem.co.uk/Lab-Consumables/Cell-Biology-Reagents-/Cell-Lysis/Pestle-%2B-Microtube1-5MLPk100/p/95016842
If you have a shaking homogenizer you can add beads to your samples and not have to transfer anything between samples.
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