Last year, the LMB was delighted to welcome Kaz Collins as the new Manager of the LMB’s Media Prep and Glasswash facility.
As one of the most widely used facilities at the LMB, the Media Prep and Glasswash facility is foundational to the LMB’s research. The facility’s work is far reaching and their small team provides several indispensable services, including preparation of general media, buffers and tissue culture media, washing and sterilising of glassware and plasticware, agar plate pouring and fly food preparation. In her role, Kaz overseas each of these services, ensuring her team has the necessary staffing, materials and equipment to provide an uninterrupted flow of goods.
With over 15 years of experience working in media prep and glasswash facilities, Kaz is well versed with the intricacies and importance of these services. Consistency is key throughout; no matter how complex the materials in use are, each item that leaves the facility must be in perfect condition otherwise reproducibility of experimental work is compromised. To achieve this, the team follows extensive, detailed protocols and conducts rigorous quality control checks.
Each working day, the team are amongst the first people to arrive at the LMB to ensure they meet the preceding day’s orders whilst also replenishing regular stock items. Over the course of a month, this amounts to around 1500 litres of media, 7000 plates and 750 litres of fly food. Before most people begin work at the bench each day, dirty plasticware and glassware is collected from laboratory spaces – a sizeable undertaking with over 300 different items from just one floor, each of which needs labels removed and residues emptied before they are sterilised and autoclaved as needed. This provides LMB scientists a ready and reliable supply of key experimental equipment, meaning they can dedicate more time to their research.
The team’s work is also an important component of the LMB’s initiatives to be more environmentally friendly. Their work has hugely reduced the volume of single use plastics in use, helping the LMB move towards a greener future.
