Washer & Biotech
Washer
Hey, I've been thinking about how to keep track of all those samples in your jungle of flasks without messing things up. Any chance we can set up a barcode system or something?
Biotech
Sure, barcodes are fine but I’d rather tag each sample with a tiny unique DNA sequence—then just a quick seq reads it and you know exactly what’s in that flask, no paper stickers to lose in the jungle.
Washer
Sounds smart, but make sure the sequences are short enough to synthesize in bulk and unique enough to avoid collisions. Keep a master spreadsheet that maps each sequence to its sample ID, and double‑check before you aliquot—no room for mix‑ups.
Biotech
12 bases is sweet, 4^12 gives a million+ codes—enough for your jungle. Put them in a spreadsheet, cross‑check each time you pipette. If it’s not in the list, you’re probably in a different forest.
Washer
Sounds solid, but don’t forget a few things: keep the sequences free of runs of one base, avoid too high GC or too low, and make sure they’re all the same length. Put a checksum or a couple of internal bases that check for sequencing errors. And always double‑check the spreadsheet before you hit the pipette—one mistake and the whole tree goes wild.
Biotech
Got it, no homopolymers, balanced GC, same length, checksum bases. Spreadsheet check before every aliquot—don't let one slip turn the whole forest into chaos.
Washer
Nice. Keep that spreadsheet tight, back it up, and you’ll stay in control.
Biotech
Spreadsheet locked, backed up, no more rogue trees.Spreadsheet locked, backed up, no more rogue trees.