Lab Rules
NGM plates: When you take a new bin of plates from the cold room, make sure it is the bin with the earliest date. After you empty a bin, place it on the floor near Claire’s desk (nested together).
Worm Incubators: Only put boxes that are labeled with your name into incubators. Unlabeled (or mislabeled) boxes may get discarded. Incubators will get cleaned and old plates will need to be transferred regularly to prevent mite infestations. When transferring old strains to new plates, pick worms individually to ensure you are not transferring mite eggs.
Gels: Extra gels in multi-well trays are left for common use. But when you take out a gel, please also remove the extra film of agarose under the gel (so that it doesn’t dry out and become very difficult to remove), and take care to re-wrap the tray with the plastic so the remaining gels don’t dry out. If you want to save a gel, remove it from the tray before wrapping it in plastic wrap and writing your name on it. Do not dump agarose pieces into the sink- put them in the trash. Keep the gel bench area neat (throw out your used tubes, put trays back in the tray bin by the sink).
Restocking common reagents: If you take the second to last aliquot of a common reagent, you are responsible for re-aliquoting/reordering/notifying the person whose lab job it is. If you use up an enzyme from the -20, replace it with the backup from the -80 and then reorder it. When it arrives, restock the -80.
Discarding pipette tip boxes:
- When you go to throw out a pipette tip box and you notice that the bag is pretty full, rather than piling your box on top, replace the bag with a new garbage bag from under the sink, and put the full bag in the autoclave room (in the corner by the door).
Snack room, snack bench:
- If you finish something, throw out the wrapper/container
- Clean the coffee machine after you use it
- If you make a mess, clean it up
If you go on vacation:
- Ask someone to take care of your worms
- Bring back something to eat for the lab (preferably chocolate)