Sterile Technique in the Lab

Case Study

Context: The University Research Lab is a biology research lab housed withing a large state university. Lorena, the Principal Investigator (PI) leads the lab of 10 graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and a lab technician, Ming. 

Challenges: The University Research Lab is experiencing an uptick in contamination of their bacterial and tissue culture experiments. This is causing a loss of time and resources because all contaminated samples must be thrown out and time must be spent to disinfect the lab spaces where the samples have been worked with and stored. 

Solutions:  This Rise course serves as a quick overview and reminder of what sterile technique is, why it is helpful to use in the lab, and then some specific protocols for the two types of experiments the University Research Lab uses the most: bacterial culture and tissue / cell culture.  It is most useful either by new lab members to learn the procedures or as a refresher for current lab members when contamination becomes an issue. 

Results: The intended outcome is for the laboratory members to use sterile technique more often and more accurately, reducing the incidence of contamination in the lab.