Sterile Technique

Sterile Technique is used to avoid contamination of sterile media and equipment during cell culture. Sterile technique should always be employed when working with live cell cultures and reagents/media that will be used for such black cultures. The technique involves using flame to kill contaminating organisms, and a general mode of operation that minimizes exposure of sterile media and equipment to contaminants.

Concept
When working with cultures of living organisms, it is extremely important to maintain the environments in which cells are cultured and manipulated as free of other organisms as possible. This requires that exposure of containers of sterilized culture media to outside air should be minimized, and that flame is used to "re-sterilize" container lids and rims. This means passing rims and lids through the flame produced by a bunsen burner in order to kill microorganisms coming in contact with those surfaces. Sterile technique, in general, is a learned state-of-being, or mantra, where every utilization of any sterile material comes with the caveat of taking every precaution to ensure it remains as free of contaminants as possible for as long as possible. Heat is an excellent means of killing microorganisms, and the Bunsen burner is the sterile.