In the fields of molecular and cellular biology, particularly in a laboratory setting, it is of vital importance that the correct reagents and media are used in every instance, including use on the bench or in a sterile hood, and when selecting, ordering or re-ordering supplies. There are various factors that exist in a laboratory setting that can make this more difficult and less efficient. For example, bottles of media and sera are often stored in refrigerators where condensation may cause labels to be hard to read, and the important information may be small print that is easily obscured by moisture, user writing to label and identify additions, or other information about a particular bottle such as the user's initials, date opened, etc. Another difficulty is the manual dexterity required for sterile transfer of materials from a reagent or media bottle. Laboratory workers routinely wear protective gloves and must hold a pipette in one hand while also holding and opening a bottle, all while maintaining the sterility of the pipette, the cover and the contents of the bottle. Prior to the present disclosure, it has been difficult to quickly identify with assurance the contents of a particular bottle. This concern is of particular importance in the context of cell culture media bottles where mixing culture media types or solutions can have disastrous effects on research projects, greatly increasing the cost and time associated. Often, different types of media are indistinguishable by merely looking at the contents, requiring reading of small print, or re-orienting a bottle in order to positively identify the contents.
Although conventional labels often include the name of the product family in large type on the front of the bottle, it may be difficult to distinguish exactly what product is in the bottle, particularly if there are user annotations covering part of the label. For example, a certain label may identify the contents as a certain media, such as a basal media, but it may not be as clear that the content is basal media+glucose. Extra time and extra steps are needed, therefore, to determine exactly which product is being used, and to find a catalog number for re-ordering. Although a particular instance of wasted time might be small, they can collectively consume excessive amounts of time when one considers that within a single laboratory these actions may take place tens or even hundreds of times within a day.
In addition to difficulty in identifying the contents of a bottle, conventional bottles typically do not offer both storage efficiency and versatility. As all storage devices, refrigerators, incubators, freezers, shakers, stirrers, hoods, culture rooms, etc., do not have the same layout and dimensions, adaptability and versatility in the storage capabilities of bottles can be a significant problem. One type of conventional bottle is the round bottle shown in FIG. 1. This bottle shape results in inefficient use of space when stored, due to dead space between bottles and the inability to stably stack bottles on top of each other. Another type of conventional media bottle is a square bottle as shown in FIG. 2. Although these bottles can more efficiently abut other bottles both from the side and the front, they cannot be stored on a side and stacked on top of one another without the contents of the bottle coming in contact with the lid. Content contact with the lid can potentially cause leakage or contamination resulting in increased costs, lost research time, and a lack of supplies. Another disadvantage is that when the bottles are stored side by side in rows, only the labels of the front row can be seen without lifting the bottles to reveal a label. Furthermore, the caps are not easily accessible and the tops of the caps cannot be seen without lifting the bottle or looking directly down from above, which is not possible in many storage situations such as in a refrigerator. As all storage devices, refrigerators, incubators, freezers, shakers, stirrers, hoods, culture rooms, etc., do not have the same layout and dimensions, adaptability and versatility in the storage capabilities of bottles can be a major source of inefficiency.
Prior to this disclosure, there have been few or no attempts to solve these problems, especially in the fields of microbiology and cellular biology where conventional round and square media bottles are almost universally used. A mixing station for chemicals used in cleaning and maintenance supplies using a color coded system has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,322,242. This patent discloses the use of various color coded elements, including caps, labels, valve members, and liquid outlet lines, to identify how the components should be assembled with respect to one another. This does not teach, however, a system of providing solid or liquid products that are appropriate or useful for microbiological or other research media, particularly to be used with sterile technique, and utilizing color coded covers or caps, corresponding color coded labels, or specially designed bottles to facilitate ease of identification of the contents of a bottle during storage, use, and re-supplying.