How to Disinfection and Sterilization of Pipettes

For pipettes, there is a certain difference between disinfection and sterilization. Disinfection only needs to control the live bacteria on the pipette within a certain range to a harmless level; while sterilization is more stringent and needs to eliminate all live bacteria. Therefore, it is higher in the processing requirements for sterilization than the disinfection. Here are some methods for disinfection and sterilization pipettes.
single channel pipette 12 Channel Pipette

Disinfection of the pipette:

How to disinfect a pipette:

  1. How to disinfect a pipette: Chemical disinfection. It is easy to put simply, then use alcohol to wipe the outer surface of the pipette, etc.
  2. And then dry it. This should apply to all pipette brands; if there are pipettes not sterilized, it only proves that the housing is of poor quality.
  3. Ultraviolet disinfection. It is to irradiate the surface of the pipette with ultraviolet rays to achieve the purpose of disinfection by destroying the DNA structure of cells.
  4. The duration of UV disinfection depends on the intensity of the radiation and the resistance of the bacteria to UV light.
  5. And can UV sterilized most brands of pipettes, but you still need to check with your supplier beforehand.

Sterilization of the pipettes:

  1. If the not sterilized straw as a whole, should fix with a sterilization bag, tin foil, or kraft paper, 121℃, 1bar atmospheric pressure, 20 minutes
  2. And after sterilization, completely dry at room temperature. Once dry, oil the piston before assembly.
  3. If it is a disposable sterile pipette, can sterilize for 20 minutes under the high temperature and high-pressure conditions of 121 °C and 1 bar human air pressure.
  4. If not autoclaved the pipette, but require some special operations, such as RNA extraction, etc.
  5. And if contaminated and affect the experimental results of pipettes, then wash the pipette with 75% ethanol. Equipment manager.
  6. If used for RNA extraction, use RNase-free 75% ethanol. Note: not can sterilize semi-sterilized pipettes as a whole, otherwise, there will be obvious phenomena such as discoloration of the digital part of the reading and inaccurate readings.

How do I thoroughly sterilize a pipette?

 How to sterilize pipettes:

  •  How to sterilize pipettes: After wiping with disinfectant, perform UV irradiation in a biological safety cabinet for 10-15 minutes.
  • 121°C, 15 minutes, autoclave ( sterilized some brands of pipettes as a whole, but considering the subsequent sterilization calibration and the sterilization cycle time that the upper part of the pipette can withstand, Rainin XLS+ and the lower half of the PL+ series pipettes are sterilizable).
  • DNA, RNA, etc. on a conventional pipette will interfere with PCR. Wiped nucleic acid contamination in sequencing experiments can with disinfectant to minimize the impact on experiments.
  • Like all of the pipettes, Due to special experimental requirements, need partially sterilized 8-channel pipettes.
    Suppose not sterilized the pipette as a whole. In that case, it is necessary to disassemble the pipette first and then use sterilization bags, tin foil, or kraft paper to package the parts, then sterilize them.

There are more introduced about the adjustable pipette use methods, how to choose a pipette, etc.