Staff Maintenance Tasks

General Lab Upkeep

All members of the lab are responsible for maintaining the communal lab environment. Shared equipment (scales, microscopes, etc.) should be cleaned after every use and reagents should be properly stored according to the location listed in Quartzy.

The items below occur as needed. Lab members should warn the assigned person several days in advance and write on the white board in Room 223 on the fridge when a duty needs to be completed:

50x TAE and refilling 1x TAE carboy. Refill the 1x TAE carboy with milli-Q water from the carboy and 50x TAE. Make 50x TAE. See General Recipes for instructions.
100 bp and 1000 bp ladders (from vectors). See Ladder Creation for instructions.
Loading dye. Make 6x orange loading dye and aliquot into 1.5 mL tubes. See the loading dye recipe in General Recipes.
dNTP stocks preparation. Combine individual commercial 100 mM dNTP stocks (dATP, dTTP, dCTP, dGTP) to make 10 mM working stock aliquots for lab member personal use. Add 10 μL of each dNTP to 60 μL of dH₂O to make 100 μL aliquots of 10 mM dNTP working stocks.
Competent cells. See the Competent Bacteria protocol for instructions.
SOC. Make 100 mL of SOC media for lab use. Aliquot into 10 mL units and store at 4°C. See General Recipes for instructions.
K medium Make and filter 1 L stocks without cholesterol. Cholesterol should be added to the aliquot prior to use and used within 3 weeks of preparation.
Agarose pads for injections. Make a large batch of agarose pads (20+) when running low. Follow the protocol in Microinjection.
Worm 2x lysis buffer. This needs to be made rarely, in large batches and frozen. See C. elegans Recipes.
M9 stock replenishment. Make three 1 L stocks of M9 in glass bottles when running low. Follow the recipe in C. elegans Recipes. Be sure to autoclave and then add 1 M MgSO₄ once cool.
Parasite Tissue Storage. Any unused parasites should be frozen every week according to the tissue storage protocol listed in RNA Extraction. Stored tissue must be inventoried in the "Parasite Tissue and Nucleic Acid Inventory" spreadsheet and include a cryolabel with the Sample ID. The responsibility of parasite tissue storage will rotate between individuals every 3 months with the following rotation schedule:

Rotation	Responsible
Jan. - Mar.	Clair
Apr. - Jun.	Katie
Jul. - Sept.	Kendra
Oct. - Dec.	Elena

Equipment Maintenance

(See Equipment Checklist)

Injection setup maintenance. See Injection Rig Preparation for maintenance instructions.
Incubator maintenance. The water-jacketed incubator has many critical maintenance requirements, including ensuring humidity pans are full, adding rust inhibitor to the water jacket, and completing full decontamination procedures. See Water-jacketed Incubators for full instructions.
Replacing incubator CO₂ tanks. The water-jacketed incubator requires replacement of CO₂ tanks before tanks empty. See Connecting CO₂ Tanks for full instructions.
Liquid N₂ tank upkeep. The liquid N₂ tank stores our critical backup copies of transgenic worm strains and transformed bacterial stocks. Follow Liquid N₂ Tank Maintenance for maintenance instructions.
Multidrop^TM Combi Reagent Dispenser Calibration. The dispensing cassettes must be recalibrated on a monthly basis. Refer to the Multidrop Dispenser Protocol for the calibration protocol.
AquaMax Plate Washer Cleaning. Refer to the Cleaning protocols for instructions on the different types of cleaning (water and AquaMax cleaning solution).

Task Assignments

Task	Member Responsible
50x TAE and 1x TAE refill	EGR
100 bp and 1000 bp ladder reaction	CH
Loading dye stocks	KD
dNTP preparation	KD/CH
M9 stock	KV
SOC Media	KV
Making competent cells (DH5alpha)	KV
E. coli HB101 concentrated stocks	EGR
Injection setup and needle puller maintenance	KV
Incubator maintenance and CO₂ tank replacement	KV
Water-jacket incubator maintenance	KV
Worm 2x lysis buffer	KV
Agarose pads	KV
Liquid N₂ tank monitoring	KV
Sweep and mop lab spaces	LN
K medium stocks (1 L)	KTR
Multidrop monthly calibration	EGR