Manufacturer of image analysis solutions, Syngene, has announced that its PXi Touch imaging system is being used in a new application by scientists at the UK’s University of Cambridge to visualise multiplex fluorescent and chemiluminescent labelled proteins on the same Western blots. This is contributing to rapidly providing researchers there with more accurate and reproducible results.
Researchers in the Department of Pharmacology are using a PXi Touch multi-application imager to analyse proteins on Western blots stained with chemiluminescent and multiplex fluorescent dyes.
Dr Emily Taylor, Laboratory Manager in the Department of Pharmacology commented: “We want to perform multiplex fluorescent Westerns because we can use the same blot to probe for different proteins as we’re looking at proteins ranging 30 kDa to 260 kDa and it is quicker and easier to use just one blot rather than looking at multiple blots for each protein. For this application, we assessed the PXi Touch alongside a laser-based scanning system and chose the PXi Touch because the touchscreen software is easy to use and the camera is very sensitive.”
Taylor continued: “Since we began using the system, we have discovered that the imaging capability is so good we can interchangeably use multiplex fluorescence and chemi dyes. We now use chemi to detect proteins expressed by our housekeeping genes and fluorescence for the proteins of interest. We do this as fluorescence has a better linear range but chemi is more sensitive so we mix and match the two detection methods on the same blot and this is helping us to obtain greater accuracy and reproducibility of results.”
To find out more visit www.syngene.com
