Life of a Lab Rat

The most important reagent in our trade is water. Most of our reagents are made — and most of our experiments are carried out — in a huge concentration of water. Pure water is 55.5 moles per litre. That's a lot. And if the water that you use for your reagents and experiments is not as pure as it could be, then you could have a problem.

Incidentally, this is why lager in the UK is so crap. When you have a product that is 95% water — because Stella and Grolsch and Heineken and XXXX (because Australians can't spell 'beer', yes I know that one) and the rest of that watery yellow wee, in the UK are not actually imported but brewed under licence — and that water, as safe as it is, tastes dodgy, then you have crap beer. Imported Pilsner Urquell is fine, and locally-brewed ales such as Owd Rodger or Theakston's get around the problem by (a) being brewed where the water is good and (b) having flavour.

So, yes; water. There are essentially two grades of water in labs; the reasonably pure stuff and the really polished stuff. The first is known as Milli-RO or de-ionized, and is all right for growing bacteria and running gels, and the second is Milli-Q, or "18.2" because its resistivity is 18.2 mega ohms per cm. You can be fairly certain, if the equipment is maintained correctly, that there is nothing in there except two Hs for every O. The Cage, like many labs around the world, has a supply of de-ionized water that is available on tap and that is also fed into the Milli-Q systems to be scrubbed and polished and de-plasticized and de-pyrogenized and filter-sterilized to yield the water gold standard. (Except there is no gold in it because then it wouldn't be 18.2). The thing to remember is that the Milli-Q system needs the input water to be reasonably pure, otherwise the cartridges get clogged up really quickly.

Anyway, the Milli-Q system on our floor was not performing to spec just before Christmas. We know this because there is a meter that indicates the resistivity of the product. And on Monday the system upstairs started misbehaving, too. Our stocks were getting low, and the chap who has just been put in charge of the water was on leave. We managed to locate a supply of Milli-Q water downstairs, but then we discovered that the de-ionized supply was also poked.

It transpires that our equipment that takes Sydney tap water and turns it into 'second rate' water, ready for gels and bugs and whatnot and most importantly feeding into the Milli-Q system, was telling us that all was well when in reality it was not. Must have been a turny-thing, lying to us. "Independent tests" showed that it was exactly the same as Sydney tap water. And the problem with that is that it buggers up the Milli-Q systems, as noted above.

So the Cage is without pure water. And without water there is no Science.

Fortunately for me, before Christmas I bought about ten bottles of ultra-pure bottled water, because I had my suspicions about the Milli-Q quality. I can probably spare about 3 of them, and am soliciting offers. And I'm very much afraid, Vanessa, that you're going to have to do better than the use of your Corolla.