Promega Magic

[Paul N Hengen]

Michael Benedik (benedik at uh.edu) wrote:

| I have heard from reliable sources that the Promega Wizard Kit does not
| produce DNA as pure as the previous Magic Kit did.  I was told that a sales
| person said that Promega had to change its kit because of a patent
| infringement.  Does anyone know whose patent that might have been?  The
| Magic kit worked very well for cleaning up DNA after agarase treatment for
| microinjection into mice, and I would like to continue using a product
| based on the same chemistry. 

: The patent is held by Biorad and they forced Promega to change
: formulations. However Biorad does not (or at least didn't last time I
: checked) sell kits similar to the Promega ones, and the free samples I
: got from biorad didn't work well at all. So everyone got screwed  in
: that deal

Just a quick note - you don't need a mini-prep kit to use the prep-a-gene
matrix. In fact, it works better by using the standard alkaline lysis method,
resuspend your sample in the binding buffer (6M guanidine HCl), then squirt in
5 ul of the matrix suspension and mix. You don't need the gizmos or pig from
Promega either.  Just centrifuge or use any commercial filter cup. Costar
Spin-X tubes work great. I found the prep-a-gene matrix works well.

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* Paul N. Hengen, Ph.D.                           /--------------------------/*
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