Physical Characteristics of Six New Thermocyclers

• DOI: 10.1373/49.6.960
• Publication Date: 2004-02-13T00:44:27Z
• Authors: Dagmar Schoder; Alois Schmalwieser; Günther Schauberger; Matthias Kuhn; Jeffrey Hoorfar; Martin Wagner
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 0303 health sciences; 03 medical and health sciences; Temperature; Polymerase Chain Reaction

Since the publication of first article describing PCR, thermocyclers have become a staple in academic and industrial laboratories (1). The thermocycler is programmable cycling incubator that performs repeated PCR steps DNA denaturation, primer annealing, elongation at defined intervals. Rapid heat transfer from heating block to in-tube sample liquid ensures high efficiency amplicon multiplication; therefore, thermal processor should guarantee temperature uniformity for all samples within an individual run as well run-to-run repeatability.

PCR-based protocols can give unsatisfying results (2)(3). Several collaborative studies shown weak reproducibility with random amplified polymorphic (RAPD) (4)(5). One reason might be influence on amplification efficiency.

Despite its striking importance literature scarce. Some were published generation cyclers (6)(7)(8). Others determined but did not evaluate physical characteristics (9)(10). impact variation thermocyclers, regard their thermocycling settings, has been fully determined. goal this study was define performance latest discuss properties efficiency.

Six new selected study: ( A ) Gene Amp 9700 (Applied Biosystems), B Multicycler PTC 200 (MJ Research, Inc.), …