Best storage temperature for samples - serum, protein, tissue, DNA, RNA... (Nov/18/2008 )

Due to spatial limitations in our lab freezers i want to reorganize my samples. can anyone of you tell me where different kinds of samples should be longtime stored?

-20°C, -80°C, -196°C...

Serum
Tissue
Proteinextracts
RNA
DNA
Bacterial Strains
Tissue Sections on Slides
...

Thanks for recommendations!

-moljul-

Why don't you just keep them at the same temps. where they are stored right now. Even if you reorganize you shouldn't put them into different freezers. Sounds like an exam question to me ;-)

I help you anyway:
- DNA: Plasmids at -20C, Genomic at 4C. DNA can fall out of solution if stored at -20C. With plasmids that is no problem because you can vortex them and get them back into solution. Genomic DNA is dangerous to vortex because you might break the DNA
- RNA: Is less stable than DNA so we store it at -80. But you should be able to store it at -20C too
- Bacteria: -80C
- Serum: -20C
- Protein: - 20C
- Tissue: Depends. Ours are formalin fixed so we leave them in the fridge. Flash frozen samples in liquid nitrogen

-UGA80-

QUOTE (UGA80 @ Nov 18 2008, 04:40 PM)

thanks UGA80! but how long genomic DNA could be stored at 4°C, without any degradation?

-moljul-

QUOTE (moljul @ Nov 18 2008, 06:54 AM)

-4`C -- Tissue section on slides
-20`C -- Serum, DNA, RNA, protein extracts
-80`C -- Bacterial strains (in LB),
-196`C -- Tissue

-tzyyyue-

Look into a company called Biomatrica. I use them for alot of our labs storage needs. They have products for storage at room temps and they have worked very well so far.

Austin

-Austin J.-