Starting your own biolab

Congratulations on your decision to start a biolab! Here the London biohackspace has made a few notes on what you might need when you’re starting out. With these hints your new biolab should give you many years of trouble-free service.

Essential equipment

This will, of course, vary depending on what you want to do. With its focus on molecular- and microbiology, the London Hackspace acquired the following equipment, roughly in this order:

Personal protective equipment

• Labcoats
• Glasses or goggles
• Disposable gloves. We use nitrile gloves.

Thermal cycler

A thermal cycler (or PCR machine) is generally used to amplify segments of DNA, for example to test for the presence of certain sequences. We acquired ours through donations.

Electrophoresis tank and power supply

Used to move DNA fragments through a substrate at a speed proportional to the length of the DNA. Part of the process of PCR result visualisation.

Our first electrophoresis set-up was home-made, using laser-cut acrylic.

Visualiser

Part of the process of PCR result visualisation. A visualiser produces light at a wavelength appropriate to your visualisation agent, making it glow a a visible wavelength. The visualiser you use will depend on agent you use for visualisation. For example, we use ethidium bromide, which has an absorption spectrum centred around 300nm, and thus have a visualiser based around a 300nm ultraviolet light.

Pipettes

Perhaps the most-used tool in mol bio. You will need several. We tend to use 10, 20, 50, and 100 ul volume pipettes most often. The standard brand is Gilson; these (and knock-offs) are available on eBay.

Autoclave

For sterilizing labware and inactivating living material. We started with a pressure cooker, but autoclaves often come with useful features, such as a vacuum cycle for more effective sterilisation of porous material.

Laminar flow cabinet

To prevent contamination of samples.

Disposal / inactivation

We have three main methods of disposal:

• Any GMO, or equipment which may be contaminated by GMO, must be autoclaved.
• Any ethidium bromide solution or gel, or disposable equipment which may have been in contact with ethidium bromide, must be diposed of using the Armor protocol (which is bleach-based).
• Otherwise, all liquids and disposable plastics go in a Virkon-filled "kill bin".

Reagents and disposables

Agarose

Agarose is purified, very fine, high-quality agar. It is used for making agarose “gels” for gel electrophoresis.

Pipette tips

You will go through these very rapidly. Note that pipettes of differing maximum volume tend to require different size tips.

Glasswear

You can't have too little. We use a lot of 500ml beakers. If you will be growing living things, you will want closeable jars.

Plastics

• Petri dishes: we use plastic ones between 80 and 140mm.