Covaris MicroTubes - Reusable?

[thesmurph]

I have been using the Covaris sonication method to fragment my genomic DNA which works amazingly well. However the MicroTubes are very expensive ($5 each). I was wondering whether anyone has attempted to clean/reuse these Caps or could that compromise the tubes i.e. Could they become brittle with continued use?

[GW_OK]

When our Covaris was installed I specifically asked the tech if the tubes were reusable. He said it's not recommended as the tubes have shown a tendency to shatter after 2 or 3 sonications. I haven't tried it, personally. Care to be my guinea pig?

[thesmurph]

I expected as much.

I will slip one in next time and try it. But if we are talking about using just twice, a drop in cost $5 to $2.50 is maybe not worth the risk considering the value of the samples that go in it! Plus cleaning and sterilizing!

I have been around when an electroporation cell explodes and don't really want to be around if a sonication cap explodes! Will push RUN and do exactly that!

[GW_OK]

I doubt anything will go flying if a tube does shatter, given that it's being held in the water and there's a fair amount of coverage around it. I'm more worried about glass getting in the degas pump.

[thesmurph]

Point Taken.... maybe core facilities wouldn't be that happy to have a guinea pig running around!

[NextGenSeq]

Reusing them seems like an excellent way to get contamination from either genomic DNA or amplified fragments.

[thesmurph]

Good point. But I often need to fragment replicate samples and so was more thinking upon these lines. Hence would be fragment, remove sample, add identical sample and fragment again.

When you are talking about experimental costs over $10K saving $2.50 isn't really exciting when you could be risking your machine!

[shurjo]

At the 10% duty cycle and 5 intensity settings I have used the 6x16mm tubes 5-6 times and they hold up okay. I have seen one case where a tube fragmented after ~15X usage and it was not a huge boom, just a pain cleaning out the reservoir. The contamination is another issue, though (I was just reusing tubes because I was standardizing something).

[GW_OK]

Awesome. Thanks for the info!

[ScottC]

I've had a tube break on FIRST usage (but only one, out of the hundreds we've processed). Nothing exciting happens... they just crumble and land on the transducer. The only reason I noticed it was because the slight buzzing sound it makes changed frequency slightly.

[daimosss]

cleaning covaris tubes

How do you clean covaris tubes? Just with water or some detergents as well?

[Hamid]

I would not advise reusing of the microTUBEs for several reasons:
1. glass has an inherent binding capacity for DNA, so contamination will be a significant risk
2. Although there is a well over a 1 in 10000 breakage rate for the microTUBEs, that breakage rate is significantly higher for reused tubes. I guess risking breakage will depend on how precious your samples are.

Thank you

hamid

[NGS Lab]

Hi Everyone,

I just got my Covaris machine M220 and I was wondering if I could resuese the microTUBE. As I can see I am not the one who is thinking to do that. Have you any suggestions how can I clean them without damaging them?

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Anne