aka the approximately Ten Commandments of Microbiology
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Always precondition your culture in the media in which you will be doing your experiment Otherwise your cultures may not consistently be in the same physiological state when you do your experiment.
Always wash auxotrophic cells when transferring from rich media to minimal media Or else you may carry over enough of an amino acid or vitamin for the cells to grow.
Thou shalt not shock thy cells by washing them in water Bacterial cells will rapidly die due to extreme osmotic shock if resuspended in pure water. It is safest to wash your cells with growth medium. Robust microbes such as E. coli can be washed in sterile saline. If you are using another microbial species, you need to test whether this is safe.
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Be skeptical of strains and plasmids that you get from others Verify their genetic markers and/or sequence important regions. It might take you weeks to figure out that a mixed up tube or mutated plasmid was causing your experiments to fail.
