What Tubes Should I Use?

Yes, we REALLY do insist on 1.5 ml flip-top microfuge tubes ...
but on larger sets you may want to consider a 96-well plate.

If you have a modest-sized set of samples (say, a few dozen or less), please use 1.5 ml flip-top microfuge tubes.

The technicians have to open A LOT of tubes. They hold the tube with one hand, flip it open with a thumb, and pipette with the other hand. Screw-cap tubes won't work! 0.5 ml microfuge tubes are painful to open one-handed.

Please don't cut the hinges on your tubes. If you do, then when they are opened one-handed, the lid goes flying away!

Yeah, these sound like trivialities ... until you're the tech facing the racks of samples! It really helps us keep up to speed if the tubes can be handled quickly and painlessly.

For larger sets, you CAN submit them in 96-well plates.

We know it's difficult to pipette out 50 tubes and to carefully label them. You CAN send them to us in a 96-well plate, for your convenience. Please use plates only when you have relatively large sample sets (several dozen at least) and the pattern of primer useage must be simple and error-proof, easily understood and easily pipetted. Here are the details:

• For a partial plate, samples MUST be logged into the computer still, and must have individual sample numbers.

  (For a full 96-well plate, you can use the Plate Submission mechanism and get a 10% discount. In that case, you get just a single tracking number for the entire plate. See here for details).

• Please use conical-bottom plates, such as used in PCR machines (e.g. 200 ul wells). The plates should NOT be flat-bottom wells. Round-bottom wells s are marginally acceptable if you have excessive sample volume.

• Please put only consecutively-numbered samples in a plate.

• Samples must be in numerical order starting in the A1 well, ascending to fill the A-row COMPLETELY, left to right, then the B row, etc.

• We suggest you mark the plate with a box around the wells that contain your samples.

• On the EDGE of the plate, write the range of sample numbers. (If you write it on the top, the sealing film may peel it off. If you write it on the sealing film itself, we'll remove your label when we open the plate.)

• Primers are best left in tubes, but can be in a matching plate if you want.
  • If the primers are in tubes, they should be labeled with the range of
    (consecutive!) sample numbers to which they apply. Ideally, you should
    also put the range of well ID's (e.g. "B02-B05"). That really helps
    the techs match samples with primers accurately!

  • If your primers are in a matching plate, there must be a 1:1 mapping from
    the template plate to the primer plate. In other words, there should be
    one primer well for EACH template, and matching template: primer pairs
    should be in the same position on their respective plates.

• Seal your plate with a 'clear adhesive film' before you bring it to us.

If you feel you have a sample set that is not accommodated by these guidelines,
perhaps you could contact the Core Director.

We reserve the right to reject any sample that is improperly labeled, unreadable, or any sample sets organized in a way that we feel may increase the risk of error during handling in the Sequencing Core.