A tissue culture orchid flask that acts as a beautiful ornament was found at Biopolis Shared Laboratory

 

 Flask Orchid: Dendrobium spp.

 

Earlier this month, I spoke to a bio-enthusiast about his idea on sub-culturing orchids using a tissue culturing flask. Sub-culturing is a process whereby a portion of the orchid seedling (tissue) is used to inoculate into new culture flasks using laboratory aseptic techniques.

In plant tissue culturing, when a group of undifferentiated and meristamatically active cell called “Tissue” is aseptically disserted out and put into a sterile and pre-prepared media containing essential nutrient and incubated under conducive controlled conditions of room light and temperature, it establishes a new growth by itself. This is what we called tissue culture.

I wonder why no-one puts this idea into a commercial service or find applications of similar DIY plant tissue culturing techniques in Singapore. What are the resources we need to execute this idea?  

A typical tissue culture laboratory needs some sophisticated equipment and essential facilities, such as an incubator, autoclave, refrigerator (and freezer), microscope, washing up equipments, over for dry sterilisation, water purification, centrifuge, bunsen burner, shaker, laminar flow hood (class 2), media storage racks, etc.

Perhaps the enthusiasm of public on the development of designs and lifestyle concepts in biotechnology can be considered as high. Hopefully with more lifestyle concepts like tissue sub-culturing activities, the Biotechnology community in Singapore – and Asia in general – could seed, grow and inspire such new innovations.

 

This blog article is contributed by Ai San Yip, who is now working as a Commercialisation Officer in Exploit Technologies (ETPL), A*STAR. Views expressed in the blog are solely independent and do not represent views of any organisation and affiliate.