Sigma Life Science, a division of Sigma-Aldrich, has released Onyx Quencher, a proprietary quencher designed to improve signal quality in quantitative real-time PCR assays.
Onyx Quencher is a dark quencher and therefore produces heat instead of light upon excitation, thus greatly improving the signal-to-noise ratio over traditional fluorescent quenchers, Sigma said. Available with Sigma’s custom primers and dual-labeled probes, four derivative versions of Onyx Quencher extinguish light over an excitation maximum range of 515 to 661 nm, which includes the emission spectrum of common reporter dyes such as 6-fam.
Sigma said that it has validated the performance of all four derivative versions of Onyx Quencher with several popular reporter dyes, and all performed as well or better than an unspecified widely-used comparable dark quencher. Onyx Quencher may also be used for other applications and is ideal for the development of life science research tools, molecular diagnostics, and laboratory-developed tests, the company said.
Promega this week launched the QuantiFluor ONE dsDNA System, a sensitive, dsDNA-specific fluorescent dye suitable for use in both research and clinical workflows.
The new dye system is integrated into the new Promega Quantus fluorometer and GloMax detection instruments, but is compatible with any fluorometer capable of measuring the appropriate fluorescence excitation and emission spectra.
The QuantiFluor ONE dsDNA System is supplied in "add-and-read" format, enabling users to simply quantitate even low concentration samples without dilutions or additional tubes, Promega said. The dye system has significantly increased sensitivity compared to absorbance-based systems and is highly specific to dsDNA, showing minimal binding to ssDNA, RNA, protein, and interfering compounds.