What type of adhesive to use with Aspergillus Niger experiments?

WarpedWatch

Greetings,

I'm trying to design a small lab system that grows Aspergillus Niger on a solid agar base and I've been thinking of making it from acrylic and using some sort of adhesive to hold it together, but I know some adhesives contain anti-fungals, etc. or they just happen to contain a lot of nasty chemicals that might make my precious molds oh-so unhappy. Does anyone here have laboratory experience with such adhesives, who can suggest the best thing to use? The entire unit will be about 30cm long by about 4cm wide and maybe 4 cm tall with about 20 to 30 small compartments in it, so the glue doesn't have to be super-cheap but I can't afford $100 a drip, either.

thanks for your help,
Mark

jim mcnamara

Protein glues are non-toxic - hide glue, rabbit skin glue, fish glue are all examples. The only problem is withstanding heat & autoclaving. They don't. Many of these glues have severe adhesion problems above 45C.

Have you considered a physcal attachment - i.e., embedding something like a plastic twist tie in the agar, to allow tying off? 1.7% - 2.0% agar can take some flexing before it breaks. Czapek Dox agar is typically about 1.2%, so, this might not work. I dunno.

chemisttree

Why use glue at all? Can't you just use a pressure fit cylinder with an O-ring. Just press the molded agar out when ready. Use a large diameter sliced open plastic syringe as a model of what I'm thinking about.