PLNT2530 PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY    Winter 2024

This assignment is worth 10 points.

Due date: Jan. 22, 2024

Goal: To learn how to work with plant tissue culture using sterile technique, and what not to do.

1. Read the lab manual introduction to sterilization and aseptic technique.

Manual: PLNT2530-SterileTechniqueManual.pdf

2. Watch the following videos, and be prepared to answer related questions.

Preventing Contamination in the Cell Culture Lab (6:07)
Good professional video that does a good job of showing practical tricks for preventing contamination.

Aseptic Technique (5:07)
Very thorough and information rich. Every movement is worth watching.

Cell Culture Common Mistakes (4:07)
Short, but informative. This technician is clearly an experienced worker and does things with the proper degree of paranoia. Very few of these sorts of videos explicitly emphasize the tiny details, like contaminating the inside of a cap, that can result in contamination. My one issue with this video is that they talk about mistakes that students make. In practice, lots of people at all levels can get into bad lab habits. Good habits are practices that we do each and every time, so that it would take an effort to do it any other way.

Techniques of tissue culture - Feather River Plants (4:14)
Shows application of tissue culture at a commercial scale for tree crops. Nice overview of tissue culture and propagation scaled up.

LibreOffice (SterileTechReportTemplate.odt)
Microsoft Word (SterileTechReportTemplate.docx)

Submitting your assignment

• Make sure your report includes your name, student number and UM email address.
• This file contains places for pasting in data, as part of your report. It is NOT acceptable to upload your data as separate files. They must be inserted into the report.
• Save your assignment report as a PDF file, and upload it to the PLNT2530 UMLearn dropbox site in the SteriileTechnique folder. Files in word processing formats (.doc, .docx, .rtf, .odt) are NOT acceptable.