Autoclave spore verification#

In other cases, however, longer sterilization times at temperatures as low as 115☌ are considered appropriate to inactivate contaminants. Steam sterilization is usually conducted in an autoclave that reaches and maintains 121☌ and 15 PSI for a desired duration, often at least 30 min. Various methods are available to sterilize equipment and surfaces, including ethylene oxide gas, compounds like phenol, glutaraldehyde, peracetic acid, and hydrogen peroxide, dry heat, UV irradiation, and steam sterilization. Food and Drug Administration, and others have set forth standards that must be met to consider a surface or item sterile for human use. Pharmacopeia, International Organization for Standardization, U.S.

To this end, the World Health Organization, U.S. This second definition is likely more accurate when considering the level of sterility achieved in most laboratory or medical situations because it may not be possible to verify that every contaminant is inactivated, but observing outgrowth, or lack thereof, is usually possible. A more realistic definition of sterility stipulates that, if sterile, no growth will be observed upon incubation in appropriate growth medium. A strict definition of sterilization requires every organism to be inactivated following a sterilization procedure. Even space exploration labs work to sterilize equipment that will land on other planets to prohibit the introduction of Earth microbes capable of colonization and, possibly, destruction. This may manifest as the maintenance of axenic strains for study and storage, the preparation of surgical devices, the growth of large cultures for compound extraction and purification, among others. Laboratory research, medical treatment, industrial production of pharmaceuticals, and a wide variety of other scientific applications all rely on sterilization procedures to protect workers and consumers from pathogenic contaminants. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All sequence files are available from the NCBI GenBank database (accession number MH734615).įunding: This work was supported by a Goldwater Scholarship to VAS, a Dakota State University Arts & Sciences Faculty Research Grant to MOG, an AREA award grant from the National Institutes of Health (grant number 1R15GM117541-01A1) to BP, an Illinois Wesleyan University Artistic and Scholarly Development Grant to LMC, and startup funds from Southern Oregon University to PV. Received: AugAccepted: NovemPublished: December 11, 2018Ĭopyright: © 2018 Swenson et al. PLoS ONE 13(12):Įditor: Zonghua Wang, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, CHINA

Autoclave spore verification#

(2018) Assessment and verification of commercially available pressure cookers for laboratory sterilization. Their adoption may also help increase the accessibility of science to a broader range of investigators.Ĭitation: Swenson VA, Stacy AD, Gaylor MO, Ushijima B, Philmus B, Cozy LM, et al. These results suggest that, depending on the nature of the work undertaken, store-bought pressure cookers can be an appropriate substitute for commercial autoclaves. Only the Instant Pot, however, was able to sterilize autoclave tester ampoules of Geobacillus stearothermophilus spores. All four pressure cookers were able to sterilize these starting materials as well as a range of microbial types, including Gram-positive bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria, filamentous fungi, unicellular fungi, and mixed environmental samples. Four commonly available brands of pressure cooker were tested for their ability to sterilize microbiological media, a variety of metal instruments, and high-titer microbial cultures. This work examines the use of commercial electric pressure cookers as an alternative method for the sterilization of media, instruments, and waste. However, steam autoclaves typically used for this purpose may not be readily accessible to everyone in the scientific community, such as K-12 teachers, researchers in the field, students in under-funded laboratories, or persons in the developing world who lack funding and resources. Laboratory science requires careful maintenance of sterile reagents and tools as well as the sterilization of waste prior to disposal.