Cover Letter
The purpose of our community writing project was not as much to learn about how to write a
paper with a group as some people may seem to think. In our opinion, the main purpose was to learn
how to write with more than one person to help resolve a community problem. The main purpose
would be to write a letter that would have rhetorical effect on an actual community problem. We did
our paper a bit different than most of the other groups. Although we did address a community problem,
it was a community problem that is not well known and would not affect your everyday average person.
As a group we decided to talk to the community organization that I did my service learning with. A
company called InnovaBio. What gave us the idea to do our paper on was when we sat down with the
community organization, we had asked her what major things could we help with and what some of the
problems that they were having in the lab were. Her biggest concern that we would have been able to
address with writing and research was their problem with contamination in the lab. Although it was
InnovaBio we talked to about the problem, contamination poses problems in any lab that deals with
growing bacteria or cells as a construct. So not only would this paper help with InnovaBio contamination
in their lab, it could potentially help other labs that do not already follow the proposal we introduced to
InnovaBio. As far as out thinking went throughout the project, when we first started looking into
research we found it to be a much bigger project then we were expecting. Once we realized that before
we could really start even researching about the concern that we had to learn more about what
cautions InnovaBio already takes and what protocols they already follow. After we read some of their
SOP’s and learn their sterile techniques and disinfectants, we knew more about what we need to be
looking for with our research. After finding many resources, we found my work to be a very useful
source. I work in a lab for a living right now and I have learned a lot of things about being sterile, and
better yet, I have access to all of the SOP’s and once I got the O.K to use them for my paper, it made this
project much easier. Because I work in a lab and see our protocols working very well and our
disinfectants working very well, I knew we would have a legit amount of sources for our paper. It helped
a lot with learning more about being sterile and keeping contamination down the least amount possible.
Once we had all of our information, the next biggest thing was converting that information into a
trustworthy proposal for InnovaBio to consider. Once we turned in the proposal Mary L. Nelson was very
happy with what we had come up with and she plans on looking into the ideas farther and at least trying
them out! This was very exciting for us to hear.
Proposal:
InnovaBio management,
After talking with management of InnovaBio, It has come to my knowledge that there have been
concerns of how to limit the amount of contamination in the lab; especially the Cell Culture Lab. Many
people do not realize how easy it is to have contamination in a lab especially when it is a lab where
students perform work and are learning how to perform the cell culture technique. Yes, it would be
great to not have to worry about contamination, but unfortunately there is no perfect solution to having
no contamination.
There are many ways a lab can become contaminated, or “unsterile.” If someone takes an
unsterilized tool or utensil into the cell culture lab it can potentially contaminate many other things. The
chances of having an unsterile lab are very likely unless every precaution is taken and accounted for.
Even if every precaution is accounted for and taken seriously, there is still a good chance of
contamination
With my experience in InnovaBio, I have personally experienced how easy it is to contaminate a
sample or a utensil that is being used until taught how to properly use it. When I was in the InnovaBio
program, I was working with the very common bacterial strain, E. coli. I was working on sub culturing the
E. coli so I can express my protein in which I was working on purifying. I made one simple mistake that I
thought would not be a big deal; I did not wipe my bench top down with EtOH to sterilize my bench top
before I started. The problem wasn’t until later, when I was purifying the protein using FPLC and saw an
unwanted peak (3 hours later) that I had found out that I actually had more than just E. coli growing in
my subculture and I had a variety of different strain of bacteria growing. Because of this contamination
in my sample, I was not able to obtain pure protein like I wanted and I had to start over on my 5 hour
protocol.
After doing some research on ways to help prevent contamination in labs in general, I think I
have come up with some good thoughts on how to keep contamination to the least. At my work at
Tandem Labs, to keep our lab sterile, we use a chemical called Cavicide. Cavicide does essentially the
same thing as bleach, but it works faster, kills more strains of bacteria, and also kills many insect cells,
human cells, mammalian cells, and many other cell types which could be a very possible contaminant in
the InnovaBio Cell Culture Lab because there are many different types of cells and many different cell
strains. Also, I have found many bench top and hood preparation protocols used by labs that follow GLP
and FDA guideline for medical research. The protocols I found do differ from the InnovaBio SOP
protocols in a couple different ways.
Instead of using 70% EtOH to sterilize and bench tops, 95% EtOH has been proven to kill bacteria
faster, but still does not kill mammalian cells very easily because of the cell membrane which protects
the cells from harmful reagents. To account for this, I found a machine that is essentially the same thing
as the sonicator that is already in InnovaBio, but instead of only sending sonic waves through your cells
to break open the membrane, it will send waves through a 20’ x 20’ room. By doing this, many cells
would have no defense to EtOH or bleach and would be much easier to kill. Although sonicators can be
dangerous to the human body when engaged, there are precautions to make it safe. The machine comes
with a setting to start on a timer which would make it so you can evacuate the room and let the
sonicator go for a few minutes and it would shut off automatically. Once the sonicator was shut off, you
could then go in and start to sterilize everything with Bleach and/or EtOH and it would kill the cells much
faster and more efficiently because the cell membrane has already been broken open; the cells are now
vulnerable.
Another option to help with the contamination would be to use newly packaged, already
sterilized utensils that are disposable instead of using an autoclave to sterilize the utensils and reuse
them. An autoclave does fully sterilize a utensil; however, once the utensil has been removed from the
autoclave and transferred to the cell culture room, there is a very good chance of being unsterile again.
It is something that can happen without even touching anything. If you used all prepackaged sterilized
items and disposed of the items once the use was done, it could potentially help with the chance of
getting contaminated.
Such precautions and awareness of how easy it is to contaminate a lab or utensil, I hope these
ideas and facts can help with keeping the lab a clean, safe, sterile environment with prime conditions for
the purpose of the lab; to be as sterile as possible and have pure cells with no contaminants. I strongly
believe that with some minor changes that were listed above in our everyday procedures in the lab, we
can greatly improve the InnovaBio Cell Culture Lab.
Thank you
Ryan Palmer and Matt Hess
INNOVABIO PROPOSAL
Ryan Palmer
Matt Hess
Outline
 Objectives
 What is InnovaBio?
 Our goal
 How easy it is to contaminate
 Resolutions
 Final Proposal
Objectives:
 Proposal
 Intended Audience:
 InnovaBio
 Biotechnology companies
 Cell culture laboratories
 Straight forward and to the point
InnovaBio
 Non-profit biotechnology organization
 Salt Lake Community College
 Internship Opportunities
 Cell Culture
 Bacterial Culture
 Does research for local biotechnology
companies
Goal:
To help InnovaBio with
Contamination in the following
areas:
 Cell Culture lab
 Sterilization
 Sterilizing technique
 Cleaning Bench tops, utensils,
and other tools used in the lab
How easy is it to contaminate an
area or sample?
 Cross contamination
 Physical contamination
 Non-Sterile tools or
utensils
Resolutions
 CaviCide
 Commonly used disinfectant
 Massive Sonication
 Sonication breaks down the cell membrane
 Sterilized disposable lab utensils and tools
 No chance on contamination until opened
Cavicide
 Commonly used




disinfectant
Comes ready to use
Safe for all surfaces
Safe for all medical
devices and laboratory
devices
Reasonable price
http://www.labsafety.com/images/xl/CaviCide-Disinfectant-and-Cleaner-LSS-_i_LBM52349_05.jpg
Room Sonication
 Takes up small area
 Damages cell membrane
 Cells easily killed after
being sonicated
 Many safety features
 20’ x 20’ room
http://www.gocarolinahealth.com/images/Electrotherapy_1/Sonicator_740_Sonicator_740X.jpg
Freshly Packaged vs. Autoclaved
tools
Freshly Packaged disposable
Autoclaved reused
 100% Sterile in package
 Less chance of being sterile
 Cheap to replace
 Faster and more efficient
 Higher chance of getting
contaminated before use
 Disposable
 Takes 1 ½ hours each time
 Uses a lot of power
Final Proposal
 Use Cavicide and disinfectant
 Purchase a room sonicator to make killing
unwanted cells much easier and more
efficient
 Purchase sterilized prepackaged utensils and
tools for lab use instead of autoclaving the
tools at a reasonable cost
Matthew Hess, Ryan Palmer
Jennifer Courtney
English 2010
4/5/11
Contamination in Labs
Nelson, Mary. Intervew by Ryan Palmer. 28Mar2011. Print. 28Mar2011.
Mary L, Nelson was interviewed on March 28th, 2011 on what could be changed in their
organization InnovaBio, a non-profit organization that specializes in doing research for other
biotechnology related companies around the valley for internship opportunities. One of the main
things that Mary would like to see improved was being more sterile and have less chance of
contamination in the lab. We will use this source to determine what some of the problems the
they were having in InnovaBio and it helped us know what some of the stuff we needed to look
up and research were.
("Common Sense Laboratory Guide to Reducing Errors and Contamination in
ICP and ICP-MS Analysis")
This document was cited because it has a General lab guideline on how to narrow down on
contamination. It has certain tips and facts that could potentially help InnovaBio Narrow down
the contamination before it gets contaminated. We will use this document to research about how
to limit the amount of contamination in reagents that contain H2O, Acids, and bases that are
commonly used in the InnovaBio labroatory
"Surface Disinfectant/Decontaminant Cleaner." Cavicide. Metrex ,
25SEP2008. Web. 18 Apr 2011. <http://www.metrex.com/surface -Cavicide>.
The reason we included this in our citations is because Cavicide is a well-known disinfectant
that can kill of many varieties of bacteria and viruses. This could help by having a good
disinfectant other than using EtOH for the disinfectant which would realistically only kill of
bacteria. We will use this source because we are proposing to the company that Cavicide will
greatly reduce the amount of bacterial and cell contamination in the lab.
"Autoclave Standard Operating Procedures." (2002): 1 - 4 . Web. 25 Apr 2011.
< h t t p : / / w w w . c h e m b i o . u o g u e l p h . c a / s o p / a u t o c l a v e _ u s e . p d f > . This is a general
autoclaving procedure. The reason this would help InnovaBio a lot is because autoclaving will
kill anything and everything that is on the instrument. It uses extreme heat and pressure to
disinfect and get rid of all bacteria. This may be a helpful machine to help keep some of the
instruments sterile. We will use this source because we are going to suggest them to not
autoclave as many of their tools and utensils, but buy freshly packaged, pre-sterilized tools.
Shewell, Erika. Reagent Expiration Guidelines. Rev 3. Millcreek, Utah:
Tandem Labs, A Labcorp Company, 20 10. Print.
By adding expiration guidelines to all the reagents that are made in Innvabio may help limit the
amount of unwanted bacterial growth in the reagent. For example, Water can grow bacteria
within 30 days of being put into a media bottle and if that water is used once the bacteria has
been grown, it could contaminate more items in the lab. If we propose to add expiration
guidelines in InnovaBio, it may reduce the risk of contamination because there will be no
bacteria in the reagent before it is used in the lab.
Hansen, Marcia. Washing Laboratory Dishes. Millcreek, Utah: Tandem
Labs, A Labcorp Company, 2011. Print.
I think that if InnovaBio had a certain way to wash dishes for the interns to follow and it correctly
washed the laboratory dishes with a complete rinse that made sure that it was clean and did not
have contaminants left over in the container it would also help reduce the risk of left over
residue and contamination. This citation is of an SOP of how to wash dishes and properly
record it in a dish log.