With ever-evolving technological advances, procedures that we have followed faithfully for years keep becoming obsolete. We want to find out if you can remember any such step or procedure that you used back in the day, but that is hardly used anymore or has become obsolete already. Here are some that our Bio-Rad scientists shared! Feel free to send us yours.
Send Us Yours!Chromatography
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David StantonPrinting out chromatograms on chart paper and either counting squares or cutting out peaks to calculate the area |
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Ramakumar TummalaPreparing our own glass columns from glass blower and preparing columns for ion exchange chromatography. Those long nights in cold room collecting fractions manually and analyzing the fractions for protein. Cleaning our own glassware by soaking in Chromic acid |
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Geetha YadavHaving to print out chromatograms and doing manual calculations |
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Anna QuinlanCollecting fractions by hand Having to be in the coldroom with your FPLC rather than being able to control it remotely from a computer |
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Steve BinderWhen I started doing HPLC in 1977, there were no guard cartridges available, so we would routinely open the top of our columns and fill them (top off) with fresh new packing. While the performance from these repacked cartridges was not as good as the original, it was a better option than throwing away a clogged column. Also, this approach worked much better for gradient separations than isocratic procedures. And with practice, you could get better at topping off. Do people still do that? |
Liquid Handling
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Laura MoriartyUsing a single channel pipet |
Molecular Biology
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Emily BlueScrubbing large DNA sequencing plates (trying not to break them) and pouring large gels for sequencing, only to get a bubble in the middle of the gel, and have to start over! |
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Yoram GerchmanCleaning sequencing gels glasses for 3 hours, making the acrylamide-urea solution, pouring it in – just to find out you missed a spot and you a huge bubble in the middle of your gel, Pouring out and restart! |
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Ravi TailorDNA Sequencing by Maxam & Gilbert’s using P32 |
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Anna QuinlanPlasmid purification without a kit Having to restriction map your plasmids after cloning rather than just sending everything to sequencing Having to use that polaroid-like camera thing to take pictures of your DNA gels |
PCR
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Laura MoriartyHaving to make my own PCR mix |
Protein Electrophoresis
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Steve BinderI did serum protein electrophoresis in the early 70s. We had a densitometer but the instrument had no integration capabilities in those days. So we would cut out each peak on the paper tracing and weigh it on a balance to determine the percent of each protein fraction (albumin, gamma globulin, etc.) in the sample. |
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Gunjan ChoudharyCasting gels |