inert dye for real-time pcr

[peter]

On Aug 2, 10:38 am, "Tim Fitzwater" <tfitzwa... from somalogic.com> wrote:
> "I'm looking for an inert dye to add to my colorless real-time pcr
> mixes to be able to check the performance of a pipetting robot."
>
> There are published reports of two different red dyes used for this
> purpose.
>
> 1) 0.01% Phenol red (R. J. Klebe, S. A. Rodriguez, M. L. VerBeek and T.
> A.
>
> Giambernardi, 1999.  Simple method for "hot-start" RT-PCR.
>
> BioTechn. 27(6):1108-1110.)
>
> 2) Carl Wittwer's laboratory uses 0.1 mM Cresol Red for the same purpose
>
> (The Rapid Cyclist, Spring, 1994, page 9).
>
> Tim

Since PCR mix is H2O based you can try any number of food color dyes,
provided that they wont interfere with the emission/excitation spectra
of your real-time detection system.
Peter