Syngene’s PXi multi-application imager is being used by scientists at the Freie Universtät Berlin for the new application of imaging fluorescent peptides on Western blots.
Using the system is providing the researchers with a simple, sensitive method to detect cancer-linked transcription factors.
In the Institute for Pharmacy at the Freie Universtät Berlin in Germany, scientists are using the PXi imaging system fitted with a 4 million pixel CCD camera, for imaging a peptide labelled with 5-carboxyfluorescein to fish out key interacting protein partners to essential transcription factors on Western blots.
This drug discovery research may contribute to finding druggable targets for treating leukaemia and other life threatening cancers.
Ee Lin Wong, a PhD. student in the Department of Pharmacy explained: “We work with a fluorescent peptide on Western blots but we can’t image our results using X-ray film because the fluorescence with this peptide can get so bright that it causes band saturation which over-exposes the film and ruins the results. Then we must start all over again with new film, which takes time and is frustrating.”
Ee Lin added: “We chose the PXi because the system is compact, yet is more sensitive than film. This saves time as we can detect the proteins we’re looking for without having to keep repeating our fluorescent blots or use extra X-ray film.
“The best thing about the PXi is that the software is very fast and downloads images we can save to a USB stick in a format we can easily analyse and transfer into a file at exactly the right specifications for publication. This allows us to submit good quality figures more rapidly to scientific journals and is a great feature of the PXi system.”
