Thermo Offers Unique Sub-microliter DNA Analysis Capabilities with New nanoCell Accessory

Thermo Electron Corporation, world leader in analytical instrumentation, announces the launch of a new nanoCell accessory.

Designed for use with several Thermo UV-Vis spectrophotometers, including the Spectronic™ BioMate™ 3, the Spectronic GENESYS™ 10 Bio, and the Evolution™ 300, the nanoCell offers unique sub-microliter analysis capabilities for DNA and protein analysis in the life science laboratory. The nanoCell allows scientists to obtain the maximum amount of information from minute sample volumes. This is especially critical in laboratories performing assays for nucleic acids, RNA/DNA and protein concentrations, that wish to limit the amount of sample used for analysis.

The nanoCell offers the life science laboratory enhanced flexibility in biological sampling. The innovative nanoCell accessory is shaped exactly like a cuvette and fits into any standard 1 cm cuvette holder and can be used for small volume measurements as needed. This allows the scientist the option to perform some assays in traditional cuvettes, reserving the nanoCell accessory for small volume measurements. For convenience, the nanoCell offers interchangeable 1 mm and 0.2 mm measurement pathlengths. Additionally, Thermo’s UV-Visible spectrophotometers feature over 25 built-in life science analysis methods and operate in a stand-alone configuration thus maximizing benchtop space. Furthermore, life science software is available for complex data analysis or export to other analysis platforms.

Real-time PCR, DNA microarrays, and forensic DNA sequencing all rely on a very small volume of DNA solution for analysis. Often these samples are very concentrated requiring the ability to quantify DNA concentrations above 4,000 ng/µL. The wide linear analysis range of Thermo’s UV-Visible spectrophotometers allows accurate and reliable sub-microliter measurements of DNA concentrations between 5 and 4000 ng/µL, using as little as 0.700 µl of solution. The nanoCell accessory, combined with Thermo’s UV-Visible spectrophotometers, is also capable of addressing life science applications such as wavelength scanning, multiple fixed wavelength measurements, and simple kinetics reaction assays.

Easy access and cleaning of the sampling area of the nanoCell accessory provides superior reproducibility over multiple sample measurements and negligible sample carry over. The sample cleaning and loading process requires no washing or cleaning with buffer solutions even when samples of dramatically different concentration are analyzed.

Whether performing sophisticated applications such as thermostatted kinetics or routine cell growth monitoring, Thermo’s nanoCell accessory offers great sampling flexibility. The new powerful nanoCell accessory, providing life scientists with the ability to analyze sub-microliters of samples, is the latest addition to Thermo’s extensive accessory selection.