Hi Aidong, In our lab we are working with phages and sometimes we have the same problem. But usually, the contamination is with other phages, not with the ones we are growing. I can give you some ideas we tried during the last year: - Are you sure that nobody is growing phages nearby? In that case, try to avoid the strains that can be infected by that phage. - It's possible that you have a lysogenic phage. When you changed to BL21(DE3) resistant to phages, did you keep growing your old strains? I recommend you to throw them away. If the phage is there, it will continue spreading. - As someone already told you, don't keep glycerol stocks, the phage could be there. - It's a good idea to clean all your flasks with HCl or nitric acid. - We use Virkon to clean all the flasks before autoclaving them, and for cleaning all the surfaces in our lab. - And of course, try to identify your phage, is the best way to avoid it.
Good luck, once you have the first contamination, it's not easy to be a lab free of phages again! *Carmela García Doval **Dpto de Estructura de Macromoleculas* *Laboratorio 20.B Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia Campus Cantoblanco c/Darwin 3 E-28049 Madrid, Spain **[email protected] **[email protected]* On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 9:50 AM, aidong <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi All, > > Really sorry for my non-CCP4 related question. Our lab mainly uses > bacterial cultures to produce targets proteins for crystallizations. > However, we have been struggling with phage infections to our bacterial > cultures for a quite long time. To control its devastating effects, we have > regularly been using large-dose ozone treatments on the whole lab space. > We have also tried anti-phage BL21/DE3 strains from Sigma USA but found it > was still not avoidable. The lab has been maintained well hygienic and its > outdoor environment is clean and neat. We keep good ventilations, including > windows and central AC systems. However, phages are still eating up our > cultures with very low percentage of survivals. Therefore, this has been > our big headache. We wonder whether you have the same experience and how to > keep a lab free of those bugs. Your suggestions are deeply appreciated. > Thanks. > > Sincerely > > Aidong > > Aidong Han, Ph.D > > Department of Biomedical Sciences > School of Life Sciences > Xiamen University > 3 South Xiangan Road > Xiangan, Xiamen 361102 > China > Phone: 0592-218-8172 (O) > 0592-218-8173 (L) > Web: http://life.xmu.edu.cn/**adhanlab/ <http://life.xmu.edu.cn/adhanlab/> >
