resterilize plastic petri dishes? - (Nov/14/2008 )

Hi, I work in an underfunded lab Has anyone ever heard of trying to scrape the agar out of plastic petri dishes and resterilizing them with a UV box?? I'm growing E coli on mTEC agar which is really selective for fecal coliforms so other things shouldn't be able to grow anyway. Maybe if I only resterilized the ones that didn't have lots of colonies on them in the first place???

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Sounds alright to do, but remember that if you didn't think it out carefully, you may end up with some confounding or absolutely wrong results and subsequently data without your knowing it. Such shortcuts are frowned upon for a good reason. I would, if I could, try to cut costs somewhere else.

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You could use (or resurrect) the glass petri dishes from old days. They are washable and autoclavable. I guess there are enough labs/institutes that have them stored somewhere in the attic or storage room and is lucky to get rid of them (e.g. us).

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I agreed with hobglobin about using the glass petri dishes.

I don't think it is a good idea to re-use the plastic ones.

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I think petri dish could block UV to some extent.
still REmember doing UV work with bacteriophage and using petri dish to block UV and we do see significant difference..
so i really think u might wanna go with glass dish.

or you could wash the plastic thoroughly and then spray with 70% ethanol instead

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Glass plates are very expensive- worth it if the labor is cheap enough, of course. A nitric acid bath between uses helps.

For science on the cheap, if you don't mind working in smaller containers, try glass baby food jars.

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