Basic Equipment

Equipment Needs: While there are many ways to equip a teaching laboratory for an MCC CURE, the following list of resources is intended as a guide to the optimal equipment and instrumentation that should be accessible to faculty and students in an MCC CURE.

MCC Discount at BioRad (Save up to 60% off Bio-Rad list prices! MCC is a Bio-Rad Explorer education program preferred pricing partner and members can receive additional discounts on equipment, reagents, and consumables for their MCC courses – Go to the Members Only Page to find links to save!)

General Lab Equipment

Micropipettors: 2, 10, 20, 200, 1000 and 5000microliter sizes

Pipet Aids for Bacterial work etc

pH meters

Balances to weigh milligram and gram quantities

Stir plates and vortex mixer

Plasmid purification and manipulation

  • Centrifuge for DNA precipitation - capable of 15,000 - 20,000 x g

  • Agarose horizontal gel electrophoresis

  • PCR Thermocycler

  • UV transluminator or other visualization instrument

  • UV/VIs spectrophotometer for DNA/RNA analysis (nano-drop or another similar instrument) 

Bacterial culture and lysis

  • Shaking incubator minimally capable of room temp.   Preferable to maintain temperature below ambient (~16oF and above ~37oF)

  • 37oF Incubator 

  • Cell lysis equipment (sonnication, french press, nitrogen cavitation). Alternatively BugBuster or other similar products can be used.

  • MicroCentrifuge

  • Spectrophotometer (to detect cell culture density at 600 nm) 

Protein Purification

  • Spectrophotometer or plate reader for protein assay

  • SDS PAGE Electrophoresis

  • Low Speed swinging bucket (50 ml conical tube) centrifuge for conducting batch purification 

MDH Enzyme Assay

  • Access to Spectrophotometers or a microplate reader able to measure 340 nm.