Spectrophotometer Woes
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007There has been A LOT of whining about the spec in the lab and its lack of consistency in its O.D readings. Both Hal and I groan and grumble about it quite often… almost on a daily basis.
How can you be confident when you get a different number every time you spec your DNA? They aren’t consistent or predictable discrepancies either. Some times your DNA undergoes spontaneous PCR. Other times, the plasmid DNA must be contaminated with DNase. Since I don’t believe either of those two scenarios, the only *logical* explanation is that there must be something the wrong with the spec!
I wish the solution were that simple. The service man keeps assuring us the spec is reading his DNA standards just fine! How thoroughly frustrating!! Is it the spec? Us? The DNA? What? The frustration just keeps mounting.
Apparently, we’re not the only lab who has or has had this problem. One of our post-docs informed us what they nicknamed the spec in his old lab – the random number generator!
That name defines our spec perfectly.
