LI.

ORGANIZATION OF CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY LABORATORIES

Chemistry laboratories are provided with installations and specific devices that must
be permanently maintained and verified. Biochemistry laboratory is organized on the same
principles as chemistry laboratories, presenting, in plus, a series of particularities due to the
utilization of biological materials and specific devices, needed for the study and
demonstration of metabolic processes.

I.1. GENERAL PROTECTION RULES IN THE

CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY LABORATORY

As in other chemistry laboratories, in the biochemistry laboratory some operations

may lead to serious accidents if uninformed persons execute them. To prevent these
situations, some general rules of work protection must be known.

General rules of protection

1. All accidents, no matter how unimportant they might appear, will be immediately
notified to the lab assistant.
2. The access in the lab is permitted only to students wearing a clean lab coat.
Protective gloves and goggles will be used for some operations. The workplace will be
maintained perfectly clean all the long of the work. Any kind of liquids or solid substances
accidentally poured or spread on the bench, balances, spectrophotometer or any other
apparatus will be immediately cleaned, so the students will permanently have a cloth.
3. All apparatus and tools to be used should be checked up before starting work; any
deficiency will be immediately notified to the lab assistant.
4. The connection of electric apparatus to the plugs must be done only with dried
hands. After the use, the electric apparatus will be disconnected from the plug.
5. All the bottles containing chemicals must be properly labeled, and should have
proper stoppers. Do not use any chemical if the bottle is not labeled. Do not interchange the
stoppers.
6. Acids, hydroxides, oxidant agents, papers, and glass potsherds will not be thrown
into the sinks.

Flammable substances
Most fires in the labs are due to the flammable liquids (alcohol, ether, acetone,
hydrocarbons, etc.). Do not work with such liquids close to an open fire. The fires aroused by
solvents are immediately stopped by smothering the flames with cloths, sand or a fire
extinguisher.
Do not throw the flammable liquids to the sewer.
Once the fire started, do not try to stop it with water.
Oxidant agents (chromic acid, chlorates, bromides, nitrates, nitrites, etc.) can easily
get fire in contact with organic substances.
First grade burns are treated immediately with alcohol. Second grade burns are treated
with special powders and salves. Further consult of a physician is absolutely obligatory.

Toxic and poisonous substances

Most of the substances used in the biochemistry lab are strong poisons, even in small
quantities. It is absolutely forbidden to eat in the lab, to use lab vessels to drink water, to taste
the chemicals.
 Use a teat, a pipetting ball or a long rubber tube to measure toxic reagents with
pipettes. Glass pipettes to be used for biological liquids (blood, serum, plasma, urine) should
be equipped with cotton wool when, else use automatic pipettes.
Smelling of toxic substances (chloroform, ether, benzene, aniline, methanol, carbon
monoxide, chlorine, ethylene oxide, etc.) it is strictly forbidden.

Corrosive reagents
Some examples of corrosive agents are: concentrate acids (HCl, H 2SO4, HNO3, HF,
CH3COOH); the bases of alkaline metals, silver nitrate, hydrogen peroxide, bromine,
phenols, etc. Strong acids and bases are not only poisonous, but they also corrode the clothes
and the skin.
Do not pipette these substances by mouth; instead, use a teat, a pipetting ball or
vacuum aspiration.
Concentrated acids, spread on the table or bench, are better absorbed with a cloth, and
then the place must be washed with plenty of water or a sodium bicarbonate solution.
Avoid skin contact with all chemicals. Wash off any spills immediately.
The acid burns are washed with plenty of water and subsequently with a sodium
bicarbonate solution. Burns due to bases are washed with water, boric acid 2%, or acetic acid
2%. Burns with bromide acid or bromine are washed with sodium thiosulfate 2%.

I.2. GLASSWARE AND APPARATUS IN THE CHEMISTRY AND

BIOCHEMISTRY LABORATORY

Plumbing, lighting system, sewerage, gas installation must be realized in optimal

conditions and must serve all the working places.
Laboratory reagents are found in keep-proof bottles provided with labels and are kept
in adequate lockers. Reagents which labels specify the deposit at +4C or 20C, will be kept
in corresponding cold spaces. For most of the laboratory works, the needed solutions are
already prepared and will be found grouped on the working benches together with the
glassware and the instruments.
Laboratory benches are maintained permanently perfectly clean, in order to avoid the
contact of the skin and clothes with the chemical substances.
The most usual laboratory equipments are:
- refrigerator - drying cabinet
- heating bath - hot plate
- peristaltic pump - table top (clinical) centrifuge
- automatic titration system - spectrophotometer

- pharmaceutical balance - analytical balance

- water distillation unit - homogenizer
- magnetic stirrer with hot plate (magnetic stirring bar,)
- water thermostat with switch contact thermometer (controlled temperature bath), etc.
Instruments
- base plate - automatic pipette with tips
- stand support - pipette stand
- stand rod - heater bath insert
- universal bosshead - test tube rack (holder)
- double bosshead - double ended spatula
- sieve - plastic spatula
- universal clamp, tubing clamp - scissors
- stand ring (with stem) - knife
- tripod - tweezers
- wire gauze - brush
- wire triangle - stoppers (rubber or plastic)
- gas burner (Bunsen) - dropper teat
- thermometer - rubber tubing
- stop clock - rubber bellows
- water jet pump - safety goggles
- safety cage - protective gloves
- pipetting aid - pipetting ball
- labels - needle
- water proof pen - syringe

Glass Instruments and Vessels

- beaker - graduated cylinder
- Erlenmeyer conic flask - graduated pipette
- test tube (and with side arm) - bulb pipette
- centrifuge tube - burettete
- watch glass - piston pipette
- Petri dish - volumetric flask
- round bottom flask - Pasteur pipette
- flat bottom flask - wash bottle
- evaporating dish - dropping bottle
- glass tubing - suction bottle (Kitasaki)
- glass stirrer rod - compressed gas bottle
- funnel - mortar with pestle
- Buchner funnel - microscope slide
- separator (dropper) funnel - vacuum desiccator
- glass filter crucible - narrow (large) neck bottle
- crystallizing disk - separating chromatographic tank
- spotting tile - distillate water tank
 Laboratory glassware is formed of glass objects needed for the work with liquids and
permits the manipulation, mixing, measurement of the solutions. The most used are:
 glass or plastic tubes of different dimensions; measured quantities of reagents are
introduced in these tubes, they are mixed and that mixture can be thermostated or introduced
in diverse devices (thermostat, centrifuge, spectrophotometer, etc).
 glassware for the measurement of liquid volumes, like: graduated cylinders,
volumetric flasks, pipettes, burettes.
The graduated cylinders are made of glass or plastic and provided with marks that
indicate the volume in cm3. The total capacity is marked at their superior part, also the
working temperature. The measurements with the graduated cylinder are facile, but less
exact, that is why they are use for the preparation of the solution with an approximate
concentration.
The volumetric flasks have a spherical or pare form with a flat bottom and provided
with a long neck and ground rim. On the neck there is a circular mark that indicates the
volume (between 5 and 2000 milliliters). They are graduated for the temperature of 20C.
They are needed for the preparation of the solutions with very exact concentrations.
Substances are weighted on the analytical balance, are passed in the flask with a funnel and
the weighting glass is washed several times with the solvent that is added to the flask. The
solvent is added till the complete dissolution, let to attend the room temperature and
completed with the solvent to the mark.
The pipettes serve for the rapid and exact measurements of liquids. They can be
manual or automatic. As for the system of calibration, they can be with fix or variable
volume. Those with fix volume have one or two marks for the volumes, generally between
0.10 and 100 ml. They can measure only the volume for which they have been calibrated.
Those with variable volume have intermediary graduations that can be between 0.01 and 25
milliliters (typo-dimensions: pipettes of 0.10; 1.0; 2.0; 5; 10 and 25 milliliter). Micropipettes
are marked in hundreds of milliliter and have capacities between 0.01 and 0.02 milliliters.
The burettes are graduated tubes that have at their inferior part a device for the
regulation of the trickling (tap or rubber tube with Mohr – pinchcock clamp) Burettes are
calibrated for different volumes: 1, 2, 10, 25, 50, 100 milliliters.