Research On The Cheap 3: Playing Nice With Others

How To Run A Lab (As) Cheaply (As Possible)

I encourage commentary; additional suggestions will be appended.

Part 1: Recycling and Repair
Part 2: DIY Lab Supplies

6. Shop around and negotiate.

• A lot of things can be bought elsewhere for less, and this place sells the weirdest stuff.
  
• Used equipment! (See here, e.g.) Really old things, especially, are worth it: they are unlikely to a) have circuit boards or b) break irreparably.
  
• Common household things- like tupperware containers- are useful. See also: Hardware stores.
  
• Ask for a samples, demos, and trials on equipment/ materials.
  
• Big companies (Sigma, IDT) will cut rates up to 25%. Negotiate long-term written agreements on consumables and services if possible, including sequencing/ analytical chemistry/ computer time. There is a lot of competition. If your college has any kind of support staff, try to negotiate for the college, and publicize: the more people will use it, the better deal you'll get. (Our stockroom gets 20% off, for example, and Dr. S's old lab negotiated a 3-for-price-of-2 deal with Qiagen. Of all places.)
• Ask for an academic price on equipment. Get two quotes and play them off each other; Sigma won't starve if you pay $500 less, and salespeople usually work on commission.
  
• Think hard about service contracts and how much the thingum breaks. Often, not worth it. (Except for: see #9.)
  

7. Share.

• Some places are set up so that large equipment can be used in common: centrifuges, -80 freezers, autoclaves, etc. Ask if anyone else has one, and offer to pay part of the service contract.
  
• There are grants for large equipment if it'll be used in common. (Though often not for maintenance.)
  
• Collaborate with someone who'll do your expensive experiment for an authorship!
  

8. No, really, avoid equipment with electronic parts. My lab has a Beckman ultra, bought seven years ago. It breaks every 3 months. Dr. S's lab has the very same ultra, bought 35 years ago. It has never broken. Old equipment that's still running.... works better. Beckman's parts used to be made by GE. Now they're made in China.

9. Know when it's dead. That centrifuge tube with a hairline crack? Toss it, it's dead. Don't push your equipment beyond its tolerances or you'll spend a lot of time fixing it.

10. Think twice and order once. I can't tell you how many wrong primers I've ordered, and I have a whole drawer of prematurely ordered things I can't use. It doesn't matter to my lab, but very important for the limited budget!

11. Try not to be depressed by how much everything costs. Yes, we're being ripped off. Oh well.

Research On The Cheap 2: DIY Lab Supplies

How To Run A Lab (As) Cheaply (As Possible)

I encourage commentary; additional suggestions will be appended. (Please only comment on the things listed in this post; more to follow.)

Part 1: Recycling and Repair

4. Learn to make things.

• If you've not bought many things for labs, you'll be amazed how much they cost. Gel tanks: $350 and up. A lot of equipment can be cobbled together, with creativity. It's worth it to make some things yourself, but do a cost/time analysis first. Check and see how complicated basic [thing] is before you buy or make one.
• Newark Electronics sells everything.
  
• Horizontal gel boxes: jigsaw, plexiglass, epoxy, some Pt wire, some long wires, a couple connectors, electrical tape. (Disassembled lamps and so on provide excellent recyclable wires and plugs. Scrap plexiglass can sometimes be had free from companies or the shop.)
  
• Miniprep columns: plastic spin filters (Sigma et al.) and a little silica gel (about $80 for 500 g; but a kit for 250 preps runs about $300).
• Find a machine shop and a glassblower if possible (some do work by mail). The machine shop can make you gel plates and the glassblower will repair that $200 flask for $20. Most expensive glassware is worth repairing.
• You can make your own gel-picture box with a cheap UV emitter, a cheap digital camera, a large box-like object, and ImageJ.
  
• If you feel really cheap, a hot plate, a pan, and some sand make a fine constant-temp 'heat block'. (But only one temperature at a time.)
  
• Someone in my lab made a plasma-cleaner from an old microwave, a vacuum pump, and some tubing.
  
• Rotation-only orbital shakers cost thousands of dollars. A few large springs, some flat stuff (plexiglass works well) and a rotary-shaft motor will also do the trick. Ugly... but effective. If you throw in a variable-speed switch in front of the motor, it's adjustable-speed.
  

5. Mixing it yourself is cheaper than a kit.

• Don't use a kit! There's another way, and it's much cheaper. They did it another way before the kit, of course.
• Most things in kits you can make, including silver stain, labeling reagents, and everything from Qiagen.
  
• DNA purification: PCA extraction, then glycogen and ethanol.
  
• Make your own media powders if possible. Not hard.
  
• Pour your own gels; buy dry acrylamide (but only if you have a fume hood!).
• Don't ever buy a protein purification kit. Just don't.
  
• High-processivity proofreading enzyme? 10:1 Pfu/Taq.
• You can make your own Taq. And it's even legal now. The prep is basically 'Boil, spin, run over column.' You can also make: specific proteases, size ladders (buy dry proteins from Sigma), and so on.
  
• Boil your own dialysis tubing.
• Ethidium bromide really is the cheapest option. Sorry.
  
• The quick ligation kits just have PEG (5000, 5%) and regular T4 in them.
• Mutagenize DNA with primers, not a kit.
• For most reagents, you can use much less than the instructions say. Colloidal coomassie: 7 ml/minigel. TOPO: 0.25 uL works too.
• Learn tricks. Like: 0.5 M salt in a blot reduces nonspecific bands dramatically. Or: there's no way to predict which PCR additive will work best, but start with DMSO. ('Additive Q' is 100% betaine. Someone put it through an NMR.) Some specialty journals, including Electrophoresis, have entire papers on tricks.
  

Next and Finally: Think, Then Haggle, Before You Buy

Research On The Cheap 1: Recycling and Repair

A while ago, Flicka Mawa posted about research at small colleges. (I respond to external stimuli with exquisite slowness.) Naturally, I thought back to my small undergrad institution, and also to the various tricks and dodges I've learned to save money. (In biology; I'm not so great at other disciplines, sorry.) Without further ado, I present:

How To Run A Lab (As) Cheaply (As Possible)

I encourage commentary; additional suggestions will be appended. (Please only comment on the things listed in this post; more to follow.)

1. Understand how things work. Because then you'll know what parts you can make yourself/ use less of/ get more cheaply. If you understand what that kit is doing, chances are you can make it yourself. (For biomed labs: Invest in Maniatis; likewise Methods in MolBio is your friend. I assume other fields have similar resources.)

2. Reuse and Recycle.

• You'd be amazed how many things are reusable when washed/ melted down/ sterilized. A selection: agarose from gels, test tubes, 0.22 um filters, disposable columns, miniprep columns, acid washes, even Petri dishes if you're desperate.
  
• Don't get throwaway regents when there's a reusable: not glass beads to spread cells, but a spreader. Use glass pipettes if possible. Glass test tubes can be washed in a base bath. (Glass beads and tips can be washed and re-used; use bleach (see comments); gloves can be re-used.)
  
• Antibodies and coomassie stain can both be re-used.
• Resins can be cleaned. Glutathione-sepharose costs $10/mL, and that's one of the less expensive ones. Clean your resins.
• Universities throw out an awful lot of equipment. Find a building manager or two, or a buddy, at the nearest big school, take them out for coffee, and ask them to let you know when stuff's going to be tossed. Chromatography sheets, microscopes, ancient power sources, vertical gel tanks needing only new gaskets... these are all usable, if you:

3. Learn to fix everything.

• Well-equipped labs need at least: a set of Allen wrenches, a few sizes of screwdriver, a hammer and a mallet, needlenose pliers, adjustable wrenches, regular (large) pliers, WD-40, a soldering iron, a voltmeter, thread tape, a small saw, nails, screws, etc. (Or access; a few labs could go in on these things, or the department could leave a toolbox in the stockroom.) The investment is worth it: repair companies typically charge $100-$200 per hour, plus a drop fee.
• If it's broken and dead, there's no harm in trying to fix it. It can't work any less well, after all.
• If there's a building manager or scientific support staff, they may know a great deal about fixing things.
  
• Basic electrical knowledge will help. If something's broken and out of warranty, it won't hurt to open it up and check the connections. This is where the voltmeter is handy.
  
• Try easy fixes first. I once fixed a -80 by blowing air through its electronics for 15 minutes.
• Call the company and ask for the real tech support people. Keep going until you get someone who doesn't ask 'A what connector?' They may be able to tell you what's wrong.
  
• Epoxy is your friend. Also heat-shrink tubing, electrical tape, thread tape, and duct tape.
  
• Soldering doesn't have to be pretty to work.
• Buy replacement parts for moving bits or whatever you use, and learn to put them in yourself. Incubator doors, for example, are not mechanically complicated but break a lot. A screwdriver, a pliers, and another set of hands usually does it. Vertical gel tanks can be fixed with wire and patience.
  
• If large numbers of screws feature anywhere in your equipment, a screw remover will prevent a lot of pain and swearing.
  
• Small-volume pipettes (you know, like Rainin), you can calibrate yourself with a balance, spare o-rings, and a tool that costs $5.
  
• If parts are cheap enough, it's worth it to replace them even if you don't know if that's the problem.
  
• Newark Electronics will sell you any electronic part you want.
• Circuit boards always die first. They are rarely worth replacing.
• If there's a Graduate Women in Science chapter, they may run a fix-it seminar! Or organize one yourself- there has to be a machine shop somewhere.
  

Coming up: So Make It Yourself; How Not to Play Nice