How to clean the stainless steel beads?

Stainless steel beads can be reused for DNA extractions with DNeasy Plant Kits. Used beads can be recovered from cell-debris and cleaned using the procedure below:

  1. Close the cap of the 2 ml microtube and briefly vortex to dislodge the bead and pellet from the bottom of the tube. If using grinding jars for the disruption of large sample volumes, skip to step 2.
  2. Empty the contents of the tubes/jars into a sieve and rinse the beads thoroughly with water.
  3. Incubate beads in 0.4 M HCl for 1 min at room temperature (15–25°C) to degrade any DNA and avoid cross-contamination in future preparations.
  4. Rinse beads thoroughly with distilled water to remove the HCl.
  5. Dry beads before use.

You can also find these instructions in Appendix B of the DNeasy Plant Handbook.

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