Air Thermo Cycler ????

[James N Petitte]

carlos h. pedemonte (pedemonte at Jetson.UH.EDU) wrote:
:          Has anybody tried the  1605 Air Thermo Cycler from Idaho
: Technology. I would like to know about the pros and cons of the instrument
: as well as the handling of capillary tubes, contamination problems etc.

:         I would be grateful for any comment.  Carlos
:  
: ______________________________________________________________________________
: Carlos H. Pedemonte                     Telephone:  713-743-1211 (office)
: Dept. of Pharmacology                               713-743-1228 (lab)
: University of Houston                   Fax:        713-743-1229           
:       
: Houston, TX 77204-5515                  e-mail: pedemonte at jetson.uh.edu
: ____________________________________________________________________________
: __

Yes, we have had the air thermocycler for about 1.5-2 years now.  It is 
definately fast, no question about it.  For our purposes we needed a way 
to determine the sex of unincubated chick embryos that would allow time 
to manipulate the embryo in the same morning.  We amplify a W 
chromosome repetitive element that is repeated about 10,000 times.  The 
PCR is finished in 15-20 minutes and the whole procedure takes about 2.5 
hours, i.e. from embryo biopsy through electrophoresis.  The reactions 
are in 10ul so it also saves on reagents.  The buffer contains ficoll and 
the reaction is loaded directly from the capplillary tube to the gel.   The 
company also supplies a series of buffers for optimization which has 
come in handy.

On the down side,  adapting traditional PCR conditions to the 
cappliary-tube system is not straight forward.  Some lag time is 
required.

If you really need the speed,  it cannot be matched. 

We also have a conventional PCR thermocycler.  My recommendation is that 
it can supplement but not replace a microtube-based system.

Jame Petitte 
NCSU 
Raleigh, NC 
J_Petitte at NCSU.EDU