Proven methods in preparing poly-lysine coated coverslip - that will not drive you up the wall (May/12/2008 )

Hi there,

Today I just had to prepare my coverslips "again" (NOTE: emphasizing "again" with dread). There's no problem incubating them in poly-lysine solution, nor washing them. What drives me up the wall is when drying them. What I did was use a forceps to pick each and every single one of them patiently and prop them at the side walls on a petri dish to dry them. That really takes a mountain of patience and a steady hand (not to mention a good vision). Is there no other ways of doing this? Any own formulas that anyone can share? I dread having to repeat this in the future.

Gosh! If I have the money, I'd pay for pre-coated ones.

Ummm. What I do is just removing the water after washing them (already in the wells) with a pasteur pipette, and then I leave them drying (lids on) o/n inside the hood. Works just fine!

Many thanks.
I wanted to try that but was worried that the coverslips might irreversibly be stuck onto the petri dish and onto one another. Will it be a problem (having to wedge out the coverslips from the dish) after o/n incubation?

Hi,

I'm not sure I understand the way you prepare your coverslips. In my case, I coat them straight on the wells of the plates where I'm going to be growing my cells later, therefore there's one coverslip/well and I do not need to touch them at all after drying, just covering the plates with foil and put them at 4C until use.

Understood
Thanks. I guess there's no other way then, to mass prepare the coverslips for use later. Dread picking up the slippery thing one at a time, imagine picking up 30 of those (takes almost an hour).