Teaching

Advice and rules for Lab Book

General

Your lab book shall help you to reconstruct all the details (protocols, results) of the experiments, which you did during your project

Your lab book may be of legal importance, if you work with genetically modified organisms (S1 or S2) or opportunistic human pathogens

Golden rule: The lab book must be as detailed as necessary (to allow correct reconstruction of experiments) and as short as possible (to make it readable)

The below rules should be followed, in order to ensure high standard across projects and fulfilment of legal requirements

If you worked with genetically modified organisms, you lab book must remain in the lab for legal reasons! You can copy pages for later usage somewhere else

Rules

• Always write clearly and in a way that others can read it!
• Label your lab book with your name, group (i.e. AG Schulenburg), and year(s) of usage
• Always start a new experiment on a new page
• Always include a date on page tops for each new experiment
• Your experiments should be consecutively numbered (e.g., 1, 2, 3, etc). For further details, see rules for labeling below
• Always provide protocols that are as detailed as necessary. You may print out available protocols and stick them into your lab book; in this case, it is essential to add a date and indicate where you modified the protocol
• Always provide sufficient details on the results obtained, e.g. a picture from an Agarose gel. In case of more complicated experiments: Give a brief summary of results and indicate where/how detailed results are stored
• Always use consistent labelling of the material, which you generate and store for later usage
• Rules for labelling:
  • Always start labels with your initials (2 letters; e.g., AM for Anna Meier)
  • Consecutively number all your experiments and add the respective number to your initials (e.g., AM1, AM2, etc)
  • Add small letters for sub-experiments (e.g., AM1a, AM1b, etc)
  • Add number after hyphen to label the individual samples (e.g., AM1a-1, AM1a-2, etc)
• Note where you store your samples (unless it is your own freezer box or space)
• Check with Katja or Hinrich if you want to store material in the -80 freezer

Additional advice

• Avoid complicated labels on small tubes. For PCR tubes, it is ideal to use one number for the experiment and one number for the sample (e.g., 1-1, 1-2, etc). Further details can then be provided in the lab book
• Simple labels are also advisable for petri dishes: Include your initials, date, strain of nematode/bacterium