Begin by following decontamination system manufacturers' safety protocols

Managing lab purchases and juggling finances are among the top priorities for lab managers, and as the world of research reagents continues to expand, they are faced with the growing challenge of cost-efficiently acquiring high-quality reagents for the lab.

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers are a group of brominated flame retardants used primarily as additives in various plastics and polymers. Due to their widespread use as well as their tendency to leach from the polymer matrices, PBDEs have become a major class of environmental pollutants. The ability to bio-accumulate and the structural similarities to PCBs have led to concern over the possible health effects of PBDE exposure.

Large organizations involved in research and production typically handle large volumes of chemical inventory that require different types of storage and tracking. When a laboratory environment is part of the mix, managing the chemical inventory used by the lab presents a challenge to lab managers and environment, health, and safety (EHS) professionals, who must submit regulatory reports that accurately reflect the status of chemicals on-site. Ensuring that the chemical inventory data is accurate is challenging; providing that information in regulatory reports can be a time-consuming and frustrating task if it is not automated.

Take a look at INTEGRA's new reagent reservoirs for 96-well and 384-well multichannel pipetting systems.

Scott Martin, Ph.D., team leader for RNA interference (RNAi) screening at the National Institutes of Health, Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, talks to contributing editor Tanuja Koppal, Ph.D., about recent trends in the use of different types of cells and reagents for screening drug targets and cellular pathways.

 Jon Webb, senior technical specialist and inventory consultant at ChemSW, discusses best practices in chemical inventory.

Utilize SPRI (Solid Phase Reversible Immobilization)-based chemistry to speed and simplify genomic DNA size selection for next generation sequencing fragment library preparation.