Screw cap petri dishes?

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Sebastian S. Cocioba

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Jan 17, 2013, 6:15:15 PM1/17/13
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Anyone come across petri dishes that are autoclavable and have a screw cap or other air tight seal? I hate using plastic dishes. Land fills hate it too. Jars tend to be too space consuming. Most other vessels have space-hungry designs.

Sebastian S Cocioba
CEO & Founder
New York Botanics, LLC

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John Griessen

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Jan 17, 2013, 6:34:21 PM1/17/13
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On 01/17/2013 05:15 PM, Sebastian S. Cocioba wrote:
> Anyone come across petri dishes that are autoclavable and have a screw cap or other air tight seal?

[or other]
How about using a a petri bottom in glass and covering it with stretch seal plastic film?
There's some good stretchy wrap available without buying a restaurant or trucking sized roll.

If worried about the seal coming undone, put a big rubber band around it after applying plastic.

Xabier Vázquez Campos

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Jan 17, 2013, 7:12:03 PM1/17/13
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Original Petri dishes were made of glass, and you can still find them. I used the glass ones, are quite heavy and a little bit bigger than the normal-size plastic dishes. They are autoclavable but not tight seal, just like any other Petri dish.

Sebastian S. Cocioba

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Jan 17, 2013, 7:29:16 PM1/17/13
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Glass dishes are as you said heavy, expensive, and hard to seal. Also i don't think 20mm is much real-estate to mold an reliable threaded surface at the 100mm width. I am imagining the threaded lip of a jar, fused to a flat glass disk, and capped with a polypropylene lid that has a vented 0.22 micron filter opening. Perfect for orchid seed flasks, culture initiation, and protoplast alginate drops. 


Sebastian S Cocioba
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New York Botanics, LLC

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Sebastian S. Cocioba

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Jan 17, 2013, 7:34:42 PM1/17/13
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FYI There are dishes that produce an air tight seal. They are disposable, pre-sterilized, and plastic. Produced by Pall Scientific.


A tad pricey but if you want to be certain that your dishes are sterile, unlike the plastic sleeved loose lid dishes that always seem to have holes in the sleeve, these are your best bet in the disposable dish market.


Sebastian S Cocioba
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On Jan 17, 2013, at 7:12 PM, Xabier Vázquez Campos <xvaz...@gmail.com> wrote:

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Graeme Dean

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Jan 17, 2013, 8:47:49 PM1/17/13
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My biggest issue with glass petri dishes is that when they tend to get very slippery when left in the fridge and they moisture tends to form its own seal that makes them hard to open. Have to say I'v never had much issue with sterility of disposable plastic petri dishes. Have you?

Sebastian S. Cocioba

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Jan 17, 2013, 9:25:28 PM1/17/13
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Its not so much Sterility as it is waste production. It makes me feel crappy thinking of all the polystyrene waste a few experiments pile up. There must be a better way...


Sebastian S Cocioba
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New York Botanics, LLC

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John Griessen

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Jan 17, 2013, 10:41:27 PM1/17/13
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On 01/17/2013 08:25 PM, Sebastian S. Cocioba wrote:
> Its not so much Sterility as it is waste production. It makes me feel crappy thinking of all the polystyrene waste a few
> experiments pile up. There must be a better way...

Sounds like you'd be happy with both halves made of PP. The lid and the very short jar.
What if the sealing was done by a thick squishy gasket so that a rough 3DP
jar would do? Then you might autoclave and reuse it, then promote to sell a high enough
volume to get them make of smooth PP from expensive injection molds.

Or just skip the injection molds and 3DP it with advancing smoothness as that progresses,
and get involved in the fight over 3DP with 3DS and Kickstarter and Formlabs 3D printing patent suit?

Xabier Vázquez Campos

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Jan 17, 2013, 11:23:20 PM1/17/13
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By the way, why do you want them to be tight seal? To avoid the agar to get dry during long term incubation? storage?
For storage, plastic wrap, parafilm or even scotch tape work fine. If the issue is long term culturing as I do, try to get 3M surgical tape, it has a good permeability for gases and helps to keep the moisture of the plates (parafilm is almost gas impermeable and slows down the growth).

As Gra says, they get quite slippery, not only from the fridge but also from the autoclave (unless it is one with dry cycle).

Also, keep in mind what bugs you will culture. You will need to scrap the agar from the plates to clean them.

Nathan McCorkle

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Jan 18, 2013, 4:16:58 PM1/18/13
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On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 7:41 PM, John Griessen <jo...@industromatic.com> wrote:
> On 01/17/2013 08:25 PM, Sebastian S. Cocioba wrote:
>>
>> Its not so much Sterility as it is waste production. It makes me feel
>> crappy thinking of all the polystyrene waste a few
>> experiments pile up. There must be a better way...
>
>
> Sounds like you'd be happy with both halves made of PP.

except that because plastic is relatively soft, you scratch it easily,
generating microfissures/cavities that can harbor contamination. Most
junk if caught down there, would likely be killed during autoclave,
but there are some spores that might just survive better in those
fissures.

I'm not sure what the risk of this is, but I've definitely heard about
it in relation to re-using water bottles... that could have just been
propaganda by PepsiCo/CocaCola to get you to buy more filled drink
bottles

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-Nathan

JG Timourian

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Jan 22, 2018, 7:29:10 PM1/22/18
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I don't know if you got a satisfactory answer to your question. But I thought it would be relevant to say something about my experience.

I am using a magnetic heater/stirrer and sometimes there are large lumps in the media I am stirring.  I found a product from Bel-Art that is a PS capsule to snap around the stirbar, so the bar can spin away and not be disurpted by large lumps.  I did not want to use that plastic, so I got a 60 mm diam glass petri dish, put it at bottom with its top. Drilled some holes and I get the circulation and the protection of the stir bar I want. It would be more convenient though if the lid of the petri dish could be fastened to the lower - I would not be looking for a sterile seal, but just something to keep them together.

By the way, you can get stainless steel petri dishes (rosescientific.com) so presumably they could tolerate some minor fine and brief threading to accommodate a screw type lid.

John Griessen

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Jan 24, 2018, 12:39:43 AM1/24/18
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On 01/21/2018 10:49 AM, JG Timourian wrote:
> Anyone come across petri dishes that are autoclavable and have a screw cap or other air tight seal? I hate using plastic dishes.

If they are air tight, would they let air out during autoclave soak, then go to more
of a vacuum inside as they cool? Seems like it would collapse a stainless sheetmetal container...

A No Body

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Jan 27, 2018, 9:49:09 AM1/27/18
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Help the manufacturer visualize it by designing it. Onshape is a good tool for designing something you want.

I did a sketch once for a reusable bag that could stand on its own for TC plants. It was going to save space and be flexible enough to get squeezed if one os running out of space. There would be membranes for gas premiablity etc. Even with the sketch the company rep took a half a week to tell me what is or isn't possible and how much they'd need to rearrange the manufacturing facilities to take the concept into reality.

The downside of what you ask is that it's to no ones advantage to make the product you want other than for the purpose you need. Making it reusable makes it even less likely for a company to manufacture it on a enough of a mass scale for you to find out about it.

However why not ask a company that has a preexisting form? https://discountcarcareproducts.com/products/clay-bar-box-screw-cap-top
Now it doesn't mention the volume or material but chat with them or their manufacturer. See what is doable. Let us know how it goes.

Jo Donoghue

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Jan 27, 2018, 6:21:58 PM1/27/18
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Can you not autoclave the plastic dishes? (I thought we did in college after we poured them) If so could you not scoop out all the agar and just autoclave them and reuse them?


On Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 6:15:15 PM UTC-5, Sebastian wrote:

Abizar Lakdawalla

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Jan 27, 2018, 10:23:22 PM1/27/18
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Plastic plates are polystyrene - cannot autoclave

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Rachel Aronoff

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Feb 27, 2018, 5:10:41 PM2/27/18
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just saw this discussion...
I also am very concerned about plastic waste from lab work...
we put glass petri dishes in aluminum foil for autoclaving.  helps avoid slips...
I don't see that stainless steel could be very useful, however, unless you know you already have a basically pure culture.  (most of my recent microbio has been more on the citizen science end of things.) . Has anyone used these?
best,
Rachel

A No Body

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Apr 17, 2018, 3:21:40 PM4/17/18
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On Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 6:15:15 PM UTC-5, Sebastian wrote:
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