ut oh need help

[Mike7704]

Alright so I was just in the lab about to finish up splitting some cells and then call it a day. I took the FBS out of the fridge and without even thinking, for some reason my head was somewhere else, I opened the bottle outside of the sterile hood. It is a large/expensive bottle and I know that I probably contaminated it. I just closed it up and put it back into the fridge, before I tell my PI is there anyway to decontaminate an entire bottle? Like maybe pour some of it out and hope the rest isn't contaminated?

Could I just put it through a vacuum sterilization? I dunno, are there any options?

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[BuffGold]

Alright so I was just in the lab about to finish up splitting some cells and then call it a day. I took the FBS out of the fridge and without even thinking, for some reason my head was somewhere else, I opened the bottle outside of the sterile hood. It is a large/expensive bottle and I know that I probably contaminated it. I just closed it up and put it back into the fridge, before I tell my PI is there anyway to decontaminate an entire bottle? Like maybe pour some of it out and hope the rest isn't contaminated?

Could I just put it through a vacuum sterilization? I dunno, are there any options?

Yeah, sterile filter it. I have done that kind of thing a BUNCH of times. FBS is pretty sticky, so it might take a while, but it will go through a sterile filter.

You are going to have to own up to it tho, because you will need to filter it into a sterile bottle. Putting it back in the fridge was dumb too. . . what happens when someone else goes to use it without knowing it might be contaminated, and their experiment is ruined? Worse, contaminations can stick around (like in the incubator) and ruin months worth of work. . . all so avoidable too.

If it was brief exposure time, the probability that you picked up a contamination is low, but it is easy and cheap to sterile filter it to be sure.

Pouring some out will not get rid of a contamination. . . I'm trying to go easy on you here, but that suggestion is ridiculous.