Madhadron:Cruft
From OpenWetWare
My own personal brand of labelling obsessiveness:
- DNA shall hav a light green dot on the top of it's tube if it is a maxiprep; bright orange if it is primer; and I haven't had to assign a miniprep color yet.
- Chemicals will be labelled on orange tape if sterile, and on green if they are not.
- E. coli stock will have a dark green dot on the top of its tube. M. smegmatis will have dark blue.
Neeraj's advice for revising my PCR:
- Titrating Mg, DNA, etc. is for when you don't get any bands; no good if you have too many bands.
- Use 30s instead of 1 minute for the three stages of PCR in general. Strongly binding primers will bind just fine in 30s, extension for 30s in 1 minute will reduce nonspecific large stuff, and 30s at denaturation will destroy less of the polymerase at each cycle.
- Can try adding 5M DMSO if there's still a lot of nonspecific junk.