New 377

[Anthony Tomlinson]

In article <52voii$g61 at net.bio.net> Susan A. Baumes, sb328 at columbia.edu
writes:
>We are possibly in the market for a new 377, which will be used only for
>sequencing.  The ABI rep told us to purchase the 36cm plates instead of
>the 48cm.  I was under the impression that the 48cm plates along with Long
>Ranger gel solution worked quite well.


It depends on throughput vs read length.  If you need to run more than
one gel/day,
get the 36cm plates as the 48cm plates need a 10h run.  If you want long
reads
and are happy with 1 gel/day, get the 48cm plates.  We do a run or two
per week,
but use custom primers so want long reads (primers are expensive), and we
got 
36cm plates as advised at first. After a few weeks I bought some 48cm
plates, 
and we haven't used the 36cm plates since.  There is no difference in
ease of  
handling, and the gel reagents cost buttons, so unless throughput is a
big issue, 
ignore ABI and go straight for the long plates.  Also, we use ordinary
acrylamide 
(Amresco), and regularly exceed 600bp of 99% accurate sequence with 48cm
plates.
I've never tried Long Ranger, but I thought it was for 373's.

Anthony.