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Mark Winey lab, University of Colorado
The Mark Winey Lab of the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) is storing important stock collections of both yeast and bacteria in their ULT freezers set at -70C. They also have antibodies stored in them as well other items.
-70 °C “The strains we have stored at -70 are perfectly viable and I don’t see why their longevity would be affected by being kept at either -70 or -80. So to answer the questions, yes we re-grow our yeast and bacteria and we have stored viable strains for years at -70. Mark came from a yeast lab and we have strains from his collection as a grad student so that’s probably been at least 20 years we’ve had those strains and they’re still viable.”
The strains they refer to from 20 years ago were likely stored at -80C for part of that time, but were likely stored at -70C when he was a grad student.
“Our ULT freezer was mainly used for the proteins we were studying that we had purified in the lab ourselves.”
Below is a list of items that the Winey Lab stores in their ULT freezers at -70C:
* Yeast strains
* Pelleted cells from tissue culture
* Ground up yeast cultures
* Samples to send off for mass spec.
* E Coli…chemical competent and freezer stocks
* Purified recombinant protein
* Pellicles
* Cell lysates
* Some antibodies or serum
* Protein samples