Virginia:
Iowa has one of the best biotech programs designed for school teachers that I have ever seen. Be
sure to go to their site - much is available free to Iowa teachers.
I do have a tissue culture kit that I developed which uses a microwave instead of an autoclave, a
biocide, PPM to reduce contamination, and simple boxes as you described to keep contamination down.
For the experiments that you want to do, I don't think you need one of my kits (the Iowa biotech
program can probably supply the chemicals) but I do recommend that you use PPM in your medium to
reduce contamination, and in some transformation experiments, it has been useful in getting rid of
the Agrobacterium. If you would like a FREE sample of the PPM, let me know and I will have one
sent to you.
Also see the websites below for more information on plant tissue culture for the classroom and
home, and PPM. "Talk" to you soon...........carol
Carol M. Stiff, Ph.D.
President and CEO - Kitchen Culture Kits, Inc.
http://www.home.turbonet.com/kitchenculture
President - Stiff Applied Technology, Inc.
Webpage Development and Training
http://www.home.turbonet.com/sati/sati.htm
Vice President - Plant Cell Technology, Inc.
Commissioned Sales Associate/Technical Advisor
http://www.home.turbonet.com/kitchenculture/ppmnew.htm
----------
| From: Virginia Berg <bergv at CHAOS.CNS.UNI.EDU>
| To: plant-ed at net.bio.net| Subject: plant physiology labs
| Date: Monday, January 18, 1999 12:47 PM
|| In an effort to persuade students (and faculty) that plant physiology has
| something to offer students interested in biotechnology, I am trying to add
| some experiments to the labs in my plant physiology course. Ideally they
| would be part of a single grand experiment to last up to 12 weeks, mostly
| spent waiting for the tissue to grow. Listed below are some of the things I
| would like to include. If we could do them with Fast Plants, we could get a
| zillion seeds in a small space. Does anyone have labs already invented, or
| suggestions for sources (human and text)?
|| 1. making protoplasts (I have not done this much, and never in a student lab
| setting)
| 2. transforming cells (preferably with GFP, so detection is cheap)
| 3. growing and selecting transformants
| 4. tissue culture (maybe how to grow the transformed cells--we did this long
| ago but stopped doing it as a lab)
|| I recently reviewed a lab exercise in which seeds, rather than tissue
| chunks, were used for a tissue culture labs on the theory that it is easier
| to sterilize seeds and start with them, rather than sterilizing tissue. We
| had a lot of contamination from the open air when we did tissue culture
| before, so I am planning to put together some boxes to keep the air flow
| down. If there are plans out there (cheap ones, please), I'd like to get them.
|| Thanks.
|| --Gini Berg
|| To me it seems that all sciences are vain and full of errors that are not
| born of experience, mother of all certainty.
| --Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
|| Virginia Berg (bergv at uni.edu)
| Biology Department 0421
| University of Northern Iowa
| Cedar Falls, IA 50614
| (319) 273-2770 (phone), 273-2893 (fax)
|http://www.uni.edu/berg|
