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For anyone doing PCR on a budget who uses a lot of spin columns, here's an article describing a home-made alternative that could save you a lot of money over time: Shi et al. (2018). Filter paper-based spin column method for cost-efficient DNA or RNA purification. Plos one, 13(12), e0203011. The method: ⭐Take out the silica membrane of a spin column and replace it with a filter paper disk that you can replace with each new use. ⭐Or make your own spin columns out of a 0.5 mL centrifuge tube with the top of a 10 uL pipette tip jammed in as a filter paper support (the tip does have to be the correct type), and fit these with the same filter paper disks. ⭐Make your own DNA extraction, DNA binding, and elution buffers with some standard DNA extraction chemicals (SDS, PVP-10, NaCl, EDTA, Tris-HCl, KAc, guanidium hydrochloride, and ethanol). The authors report that their recycled and home-made spin columns worked very well with double-stranded DNA, but they didn't work very well with super-coiled plasmids. And it cut the price down from an estimated $4.00 per extraction to $0.70 per extraction (with RNAse being the largest expense in the latter). So ideal for low-budget projects that need a higher-budget approach! The method should also be compatible with other DNA extraction methods such as those using proteinase K. Guanidium hydrochloride could possibly be replaced with potassium iodide or sodium iodide, since these are both chaotropic salts that have been shown to work well with silica-based DNA extraction methods. But this would need some experimenting to demonstrate it works. Check out the article here: https://t.co/ALX9d2XZne