We understand that the preparation of collagen I gel can be daunting to new users. Here are some tips and tricks to help you get better in preparing collagen I gel.
- Good pipetting skills and practices help minimize pipetting errors and reduce the formation of bubbles. We recommend that users practice the following steps:
- Immerse the tip slightly into the solution while drawing the liquid in to minimize the coating of liquid on the outside of the tip.
- Account for the temperature difference between the liquid and tip. Dispense the first drawn volume back into the original tube, and then start pipetting. By doing this, the inside of the tip is pre-wetted; this helps to account for any volume taken up by pre-wetting, increasing pipetting accuracy of viscous solutions.
- Dispense liquid against the sidewall of the tube.
- Make sure 10X PBS with phenol red is not frozen as its color changes when it is about to freeze.
- Do not lift the tip off the collagen solution while mixing to reduce bubble formation.
- Do not lift the microcentrifuge tube up from ice while mixing to prevent any unwanted polymerization of collagen gel.