[Pollinator] Extracting pollen from ethanol

[John Purdy]

Does the centrifuge cause pollen to cake and be more difficult to work with?
Similarly does the process of drying down deposit any material that was
dissolved in the ethanol onto the pollen grains making them harder to work
with?

There are 3 approaches to consider:
1) filtration through a 5 micron filter - there are filter cassettes that
fit onto a syringe or you can use vacuum to draw the liquid through.
2) You can use a vacuum chamber that takes multiple samples simultaneously
and dries down the solvent.
3) you can set the samples in a tray and use a gentle stream of air or
nitrogen gas to speed up the evaporation. I think the apparatus with
multiple air jets can be purchased.



John Purdy PhD




On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 3:53 PM, Asya Robertshaw <asya.robertshaw at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm a graduate student in pollination biology and as part of my PhD
> dissertation I am trying to identify pollen grains on insects' bodies. I've
> collected a number of pollinators over the years that were stored in glass
> vials in 70% ethanol until they were pinned. Now I am trying to extract the
> pollen that was left behind in the ethanol when the insects were removed.
> Does anyone have any suggestions for how to do that efficiently? I've tried
> to simply let the ethanol evaporate from the vials, but that takes a very
> long time. I've also tried centrifuging the solution, which works great.
> However, because of the large volume of ethanol in each vial, I need to
> transfer it to at least 7-8 microcentrifuge tubes, which is also not very
> efficient considering how many total samples I have. If anyone has any
> other methods or tips for getting the pollen out of the ethanol solution, I
> would greatly appreciate it!
>
> Thanks!
> Asya
>
> --
> Asya Robertshaw
> Doctoral Candidate
> Purdue University
> Dept of Botany & Plant Pathology
> 915 W State Street
> West Lafayette, IN 47907
>
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