Personal Note From Patrick, The Editor

Dear Reader,it’s a pleasure to see you again.

I have a little announcement - we are working on making these lessons available in a podcast format as well.

Thus, if you like to listen to an episode first and provide some feedback, just click here!

Apart from that, I can offer you some insights in how sustainable practice acts as a frame to improve our science.

To my mind, sustainable solutions have to be implemented sustainably – that is, with a benefit for the science itself. Let me demonstrate what that means based on a concrete research example:

Number Of The Day

A microbiology laboratory was able to save plastic waste worth $1,806 per year simply by reducing the use of plastic items. While smarter designs like preparing mastermixes were one change, they were also able to autoclave tubes to reuse them. Additionally, they changed some of their plating techniques. You can read more about the other changes they made right here.

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Improving Science Sustainably

To make our laboratories truly more sustainable, we need to understand that sustainability is not a trade-off for scientific performance.

Theoretically, one could propose a reduction in research output in favor of protecting resources, but sustainable conduct in science will never result in less robust data or lower quality.

In fact, sustainability often means prioritizing efficiency and effectiveness, thereby optimizing scientific conduct. In other words, sustainability provides a new incentive to optimize practices that have become bad habits.

A Concrete Example

Let’s go through a concrete example to demonstrate this. Assume we want to investigate the effect of a microbial toxin on human cells.

First, we need to isolate our toxin. Our workflow includes introducing a plasmid (a piece of DNA) into bacteria to make them strong toxin producers. Typically, these plasmids are stored in a -70°C freezer.

The Freezer Search – Saving Time

In a sustainable lab, we aim to minimize how often the freezer door is opened to reduce energy consumption. Therefore, a labeling and organization system for storing samples/plasmids is established, ensuring that each sample is easy to find.

The benefits for researchers are threefold.

• It saves time! In many labs without such a system, it’s common to search through dozens of boxes with unclear handwriting.
• It safeguards samples by reducing the risk of damage if they are left out too long since we cannot find what we are looking for.
• It also reduces the chance of freezer failure by preventing excessive ice accumulation, ensuring the lid seals properly (less air exchange means less work for the compressor).

PCR Cycling – Prolonging Lifetimes

Furthermore, we want to amplify the DNA sequence for the toxin via PCR. The goal is to reduce plastic waste and energy consumption. A sustainable scientist will prepare mastermixes. In this way, they can reuse tips and save time with an optimized pipetting scheme.

Additionally, by increasing the holding temperature (the steady state after PCR is complete) from 4°C to 10°C or even 12°C, we can save about 30% of energy. The DNA is not affected because it only spends a few hours in the machine, not weeks or months. However, this adjustment reduces workload and condensation within the machine, thereby extending its lifetime.

Transforming the Bacteria – Speeding Things Up

After we transform our bacteria (introducing the plasmid that instructs the bacteria to produce more toxin), we need to plate the bacteria to select the right colony that produces the toxin. Normally, this requires spreading the bacteria on many plates, consuming time, space, and plastics.

However, a more sustainable approach, as described in this and this paper, allows us to use a serial dilution and place drops on plates instead of spreading them out. Letting the drops dry instead of spreading them out also enhances viability. This method allows us to prepare six samples simultaneously, without having to spread them out – thus, saving time, space, and plastic since fewer plates and spreaders are required.

Testing For Toxins – Using Less Sample

To test whether our bacteria produce the toxin, we use chromatographic methods like HPLC. These methods allow us to precisely analyze the presence of the toxin.

Fortunately, our lab has chosen to purchase a new UPLC instead of another HPLC due to its efficiency, even though the latter was cheaper. Now, we save more than 50% of time because the gradients are much shorter. This also means we save on the required sample for each run and overall energy use.

Cell Culture Work – Increasing Safety

To prepare our human cell line for the toxicity test, we start working under a biosafety hood, which requires the use of gloves. By researching which glove type is the most sustainable, we learned about the resistance of glove materials and how chemical penetration relates to thickness.

This knowledge allows us to choose the right gloves for the chemicals we use, thus safeguarding our health. We also know how to act when we spill chemicals on our gloves without panicking and causing our experiment to fail.

Final Preparations – Saving Money

Eventually, we treat our cells with the toxins and observe them under a microscope. For this, we need to stain markers with antibodies to visualize specific cellular components. Since we aim to reduce waste, we determined the minimal effective amount of antibody instead of using the first concentration that works. Given the high price of antibodies, this greatly benefits the lab's finances.

We also found a protocol with a more efficient incubation strategy that reduces the time of secondary antibody staining in the cold room. This approach saves energy and speeds up the process. Together with the reduced antibody amount, it prevents overstaining, which can be a serious issue in microscopy.

By the way, we’ve also improved safety by using a xylene-free mounting medium for preparing microscope slides—a topic few know about.

At The Microscope – Sample Wellbeing and Time

Finally, we arrived at the microscope. We double-check our settings to see whether we can save on energy consumption. We noticed that the previous user adjusted the laser intensity and didn’t switch it back. If we hadn’t caught this, our fluorophores might have been bleached during the analysis, and our sample could have been wasted.

We also take extra time to identify the most promising parts of our samples to analyze, then use the automatic scanning function to focus only on these areas rather than the entire sample. This approach saves energy and reduces the time the microscope is occupied from 8 hours to 3 hours.

Applying The Knowledge

In essence, it’s about realizing that sustainable practices will not compromise your scientific work (if you allow for carry over, then because it does not matter anyway).

However, when adjusting protocols, try to do so at the start of a new project, as changes during an ongoing experimental series can introduce variability. In theory, this shouldn’t be an issue for robust protocols, but often steps are so dependent on specific handling styles that any deviation can obscure results—there is a reason we still endure a replication crisis ...

Finally, use sustainability as an incentive for long-term thinking. Investing more money or time upfront, although our anxiety pushes us to produce data as soon as possible, will pay off plenty.

Upcoming Lesson:

The Role Of Publishers For Sustainable Science

Asking You

How much money could a marine biotoxin testing laboratory save each year by adopting sustainable practices?

How We Feel Today

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Edited by Patrick Penndorf
Connection@ReAdvance.com
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