Buying biology lab equipment for a new molecular and cell biology laboratory: which common laboratory equipment has to be there on day one, what can be shared or bought as a service, and the order to spend in when the budget arrives at once

The order to buy in

1. Containment and culture first. A certified biosafety cabinet and a carbon dioxide incubator decide whether cell work can happen at all, and both have lead times and installation requirements. Nothing else in a cell biology laboratory matters until these are in and certified.
2. Then the separations you use every day. A benchtop centrifuge and a microcentrifuge, refrigerated if you work with protein or RNA. These are used constantly by everybody, and a laboratory with one shared microcentrifuge develops a queue within a week.
3. Then amplification and detection. A thermal cycler, a quantitative instrument if your work needs one, and a way to read gels or blots. Buy the throughput you actually have rather than the throughput you hope for, since these are the easiest items to add later.
4. Then cold storage, sized with headroom. A laboratory refrigerator, a minus twenty freezer and a minus eighty with room to grow, plus monitoring and alarms from day one. Cold storage is where samples are lost and it is the item most often bought exactly to current need.
5. Buy imaging, sequencing and cytometry as a service until the work is proven. A microscope, a sequencer and a cytometer are the instruments most often bought too early and used least. Core facility access gives better instruments with expert support, and the purchase argument becomes obvious once scheduling is the constraint.

The services the building has to provide

Power with the right sockets in the right places, a floor that takes the load, ventilation that copes with the heat, and drainage where it is needed. Equipment orders frequently outrun what the room can supply, and building work is slow.

Get the site preparation documents for every large item before ordering, and lay them over a floor plan. Discovering that two freezers and an incubator share a circuit is better done on paper.

Service contracts, and which ones are worth it

Contracts are worth it where a failure stops the work and where the repair needs the manufacturer: biosafety cabinets, ultra low freezers, and anything with optics or a detector. For a simple centrifuge, repair on failure is usually cheaper.

Certification is separate from service and is not optional for cabinets and hoods. Book it annually and post the date on the unit.

What to spend the last of the budget on

Consumables, tips, tubes and enough plasticware to work for a term, plus a spare of anything whose failure stops everything. A laboratory with instruments and no consumables cannot start.

Keep a contingency. Something will be missing, something will not fit, and the item you did not think of is always needed in the first fortnight.

Common questions

What common laboratory equipment does a new biology laboratory need first?

A certified biosafety cabinet, a carbon dioxide incubator, refrigerated benchtop and microcentrifuges, a thermal cycler, cold storage with alarms, a balance, a pH meter, a water purification system and a working pipette set.

What biology lab equipment is better shared?

Anything used intermittently and expensive to own: confocal and high content imaging, sequencing, cytometry, mass spectrometry and ultracentrifugation. Core access usually gives better instruments and expertise for less than ownership.

How much cold storage should a new laboratory buy?

More than current need, with the failure plan written before the first sample goes in. Freezers fill faster than anyone predicts and the day a full freezer fails is the day you find out whether there was anywhere to put its contents.

New or refurbished?

Refurbished works well for mechanically simple items such as centrifuges, incubators and shakers, from a supplier offering a warranty and service. For anything with optics, detectors or a regulated role, the service history matters more than the saving.

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