Incubators are laboratory equipment used to maintain and grow microbiological cultures or cell cultures, regulating viable growth factors such as temperature, humidity and ventilation.
There are incubators that have the ability to control extremely low temperatures (microbiological incubators), humidity, and carbon dioxide levels (incubators for cell cultures). Microbiological incubators are mainly used in the growth and storage of bacterial cultures at temperatures between 5 and 37 ºC. Cell culture incubators work at 37 ºC, simulating body temperature conditions.
Laboratory incubators are widely used for biology applications, such as for cell and tissue cultures, for pharmaceutical and hematological studies, for biochemical studies, food processing and cell aeration, also used for animal studies, solubility and fermentation studies as well as for bacterial cultures.
Incubators are widely used to study tissue cultures involving the extraction of fragments of animal or plant tissue and to store these “explants” (for example cells isolated from a portion of tissues) in controlled environments (temperature, pH, CO2 and humidity) and subsequently analyze their growth.
CO2 incubators, whose main objective is to simulate the physiological conditions of mammals, unfortunately, the environments created within these equipment are also ideal for the proliferation of certain biological contaminants.
Uses and operation of these equipment
As mentioned above, the development and maintenance of microbiological and cellular cultures is possible in laboratories thanks to the presence of incubators, which not only control the temperature and humidity of the environment in which the samples are stored, but are also able to control the Co2 and oxygen present. The most common uses for these equipment are experimental work in cell biology, microbiology, and molecular biology. Bacteria such as Escherichia coli, yeasts, or human cells can be maintained and developed in the incubator. This is possible thanks to its temperature variation, which can range from 5°C to 100°C in some more advanced equipment.
Other important uses for incubators include stem cell studies, incubation of antibodies in tissues, diagnosis of harmful pathogens such as bacteria and germs, as well as pharmaceutical and hematological investigations.
The basic operating modes of an incubator are usually natural convection, where the airflow is generated by a difference in temperature and forced convection, in which external equipment such as a cooling fan or pump is used to create a stream of air.
Incubators Today
You must keep in mind that there is a great variety of incubators, depending on the use you want to give it. In the laboratory, the most used are the dry incubator, which simulates temperatures that allow the development or maintenance of cells, the wet incubator of Co2, ideal for samples such as petri plates or microplates and the thermal-shaker incubator, which also shakes the samples evenly, obtaining a homogeneous mixture during the incubation process. The minimum care for this incubation equipment and that will make longer its useful life, is to implement a current controller, to avoid unexpected cuts in the power supply, to take care of the spill of corrosive substances that damage the equipment and always regulate the temperature to prevent overheating.
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