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Product Watch: Multiplex TaqMan from Life Tech; Agilent's Blood PCR Kits

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Life Technologies, a Thermo Fisher Scientific brand, said this week that it has launched TaqMan multiplex reagents.

The new products are designed to reduce the cost of analysis and preserve starting material for applications such as plant genotyping or pathogen detection, Life Tech said.

The new multiplexing solutions include:

• TaqMan QSY probe with new QSY quencher and two new ABY and JUN dyes. These combine with FAM and VIC dyes to provide a set of four dyes, which have spectral wavelengths closely aligned with the filter channels available on Applied Biosystems-branded real-time PCR instruments.
• TaqMan multiplex master mix, which is specially formulated with the necessary components to amplify up to four targets in the same reaction. It contains Mustang Purple dye, a new passive reference compatible with the new ABY and JUN dyes.
• Spectral calibration plates, available in different formats for use with several Life Tech-branded real-time PCR systems, including the QuantStudio, ViiA 7, and 7500 and 7500 Fast real-time PCR system.
• Off-the-shelf TaqMan RNaseP and GAPDH QSY assays to quantify GAPDH and RNAseP genes. These assays are also available in a primer-limited format.

The new products double the capacity of Life Tech's qPCR systems to interrogate samples for up to four targets simultaneously, Life Tech said.


Agilent Technologies this week introduced the SureDirect Blood PCR kit for amplifying DNA directly from blood and blood derivatives without the need for nucleic acid extraction and isolation.

The new kit simplifies the DNA amplification workflow and decreases turnaround time by enabling PCR directly from fresh, frozen, and dried blood, as well as plasma and serum from human and animal samples.

The kit also includes the company's inhibitor-resistant polymerase, DMSO, and positive control template and primers, providing the ability to overcome anti-coagulant and blood PCR inhibition and allowing for robust DNA target amplification even in high blood concentrations, Agilent said.

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