How many people pellet bacteria cultures in their tissue culture centrifuge? - (Jan/24/2015 )

We only have one large centrifuge in our lab and it is in our tissue culture room. We obviously use this for tissue culture but we also use it to spin down our bacterial cultures. Sometimes I have random bacterial contamination so I am always concerned that this source of bacteria is from someone contaminating the centrifuge, a small droplet of culture would contain a lot of bacteria. I have started to spray my tissue culture tubes with 70% ethanol after spinning them in the centrifuge just in case. Any thoughts, comments, suggestions? 

Thanks

You need to talk to the lab manager or your supervisor. You definitely should not use that centrifuge to pellet down your bacteria. You must use a separate centrifuge.

We have separate rooms and centrifuges.

If you spin the bacteria in tissue cultures, at least the ethanol wash is the need. Also cleaning the whole centrifuge inside with ethanol after you finish i s a good idea. Especially cleaning the tube holders insides regulary. Generaly samples in centrifuge spill stuff around. Even tiny bit outside the screw gets pushed out by the centrifugal force.. and into tube holder.

Good to know, but bare in mind that spraying with ethanol does not always kill and eliminate bacteria entirely. I have studied that.

Not a good idea at all. Tissue culture centrifuges should be in the TC room, where no one should even enter with a tube containing bacterial cultures, let alone using the centrifuge.

With that said, we once had a PhD student who used TC incubators for bacterial plate incubation! To repeat myself, not a good idea at all.