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When you use cultures e.g. insect cells, which are infected with virus one way to clean the (plastics) shake flasks is with virkon. Which is the most effective way to clean your flasks in order to extinguish the virus? Also, is it effective to use SDS in order to denatured the virus proteins?

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  • $\begingroup$ I've always cultured either in disposable plastic vessels, or in glass flasks, so that they can be autoclaved and run through a depyrogenation oven. SDS will likely disrupt the virus particles, but it won't do anything about leftover DNA/RNA, which could still be infective/pathogenic. $\endgroup$
    – MattDMo
    May 29, 2013 at 13:55
  • $\begingroup$ I use a disinfectant solution of such as lizol (popular floor/toilet disinfectant). $\endgroup$
    – WYSIWYG
    May 29, 2013 at 14:46
  • $\begingroup$ Just to be clear, when you say clean, do you mean to disinfect to throw away, or do you plan on reusing them? I would certainly not reuse. Bleach is always a good idea, and when I did more serious BSL 3 work we had to use PAA. $\endgroup$
    – Atl LED
    Aug 28, 2013 at 0:53

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I use virkon for cell cultures, but for viruses I tended to use standard bleach during the time I worked in a virology lab.

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