Autoclave Help

[gatrellm]

I am trying to teach high school biology in a school with a serious lack of equipment. Can I sterilize nutrient agar without one? Any suggestions

Gatrellm

[Jorge1907]

You can try a kitchen pressure cooker and there's always Tyndalization for broth.


Maybe you could contact some local testing labs and beg media that's expired.

[kmunson779]

I read an interesting [Only registered users see links. ] on microwave sterilization a few months back.

[Jorge1907]

Microwave is not used for media sterilization - more so for melting agar. Still - maybe you could try it - what do you have to lose?

[Aga]

You can make some kind of water bath for tyndalization and pressure cooker can be useful for sterilization.

Using microwave oven you'll get your agar melted but any liquid evaporates quite quickly and I don't know if you can close your tubes or flasks tight using microwave, so you'll finally get a lot more concentrated medium. I don't recommend microwaving.

[Jorge1907]

Tyndalization does not work for agar media.

[Aga]

Originally Posted by Jorge1907

Tyndalization does not work for agar media.

Some media are not designed for sterilization. Slanetz and Bartley agar base is one example - you can't sterilize it and the only thing you must do is to slowly bring it to boil untill agar is dissolved (off course it concernes pulverized medium ready to made).

In this case you don't even use tyndalization. Agar will dissolve, I checked it.

[Jorge1907]

This discussion involved nutrient agar for school demonstration. A highly selective, differential medium such as Slanetz and Bartley is not relevant.

[NATHANALANPATRICKROGERS]

Originally Posted by gatrellm

I am trying to teach high school biology in a school with a serious lack of equipment. Can I sterilize nutrient agar without one? Any suggestions

Gatrellm

A few pointers when working without an autoclave -

1. Get the students to work under flame and close the windows.
2. Don't use a pressure cooker instead as they are pretty dangerous to use.
3. Nutrient agar is almost always contaminated through handling
e.g. opening lids, dirty bottles, sniffing it, whatever else high school students do...

P.S. I'd say just mix it up fresh and run it to the kid's benches like it's a tray of hot brownies. They won't know the difference

P.P.S. Use autoclave tape but borrow a brown texta from the art dept.

[Aga]

Originally Posted by Jorge1907

This discussion involved nutrient agar for school demonstration. A highly selective, differential medium such as Slanetz and Bartley is not relevant.

The discussion started in the first post - yes, but maybe nutrient agar was just an example to address the problem? And who knows who will read these posts?

I guess all ideas are relevant as far as they are connected to replace autoclave with sth else.
And once more - you'll get agar dissolved by tyndalization or boiling. You won't have it sterile, that's for sure.