Stanford Student Claims to Run Bootleg Covid-19 Testing Lab

Re:Stanford Student Claims to Run Bootleg Covid-19 Testing Lab by gravelc on Friday March 20, 2020 @01:57AM (#22635331)

I'd advise against this unless you really know what you're doing. Equipment is just one thing. You need a very well controlled environment that absolutely prevents cross-contamination and environmental contamination. My lab is a very clean molecular biology lab and it isn't good enough for that.

You need processes in place that ensure that these types of contamination are prevented, and constantly checked for. You need a very robust pipeline from sample collection to result dissemination that ensure no mix ups.

All these things are possible, but PCR is ultrasensitive and processes are hard; you could have a huge amount of false results if not very very careful.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Stanford Student Claims to Run Bootleg Covid-19 Testing Lab by danieltillett on Friday March 20, 2020 @06:21AM (#22636436)

It really isn’t that difficult to avoid cross-contamination. As someone who has done literally 10s of thousand of PCR reactions (probably 100s of thousands) you just need to do your extraction and set-up seperate from where you run the reactions.

The real problem seems to be the kit-cowboys who have no idea how to do anything unless it comes out of a kit.

[ Parent | on HN ]