Cleaning protocol for bearing balls? - (Oct/28/2008 )

Hi

I wonder if anybody has a protocol for cleaning/reuse of bearing balls?
we use them to treat plant tissue that will be used later for PCR, so, we're concerned about reusing the balls for other samples.
does anybody have a protocol for cleaning them? Could you share?

thanks

We use similar stainless steel balls to homogenize samples for either RNA extraction or protein homogenates. I generally don't re-use beads when I'm homogenising tissue for RNA extraction because I don't want any contamination or sample degradation. However, I do re-use beads for other uses, in which case I wash them with virkon and then rinse with water and place them in 70% ethanol until they're used again.
You could re-use them for RNA samples to save on costs, but I would wash them well, wash them in RNA zap (or something similar), then place them into RNase free ethanol for later use.

Hope this helps

What about washing well, then heating to 250 deg C in an oven for a while to burn off any RNA/protein left behind.