USA
January 21, 2013
Water bath thermal cycling technology in the Hydrocycler enables increased PCR laboratory efficiency and delivers optimal throughput in high volume genomics laboratories.
LGC Genomics is delighted to announce that they have just completed the sale of their one hundredth Hydrocycler, a milestone which cements the technology as the ideal solution for high volume PCR laboratories around the world.
The Hydrocycler water bath thermal cycler delivers unrivalled PCR throughput, using water bath thermal cycling to deliver thousands of concurrent PCR reactions in any format of microtitre plate.
Jeff Anthony, Marketing Director, LGC Genomics said, “The beauty of the Hydrocycler is that, as well as being technologically advanced, it works. It works better and it works faster. Rapid temperature changes - and subsequently, keeping them stable once you have got them – leave some machines working hard to avoid undershoot and overshoot. Water baths have near-zero ramp time. Our Hydrocycler is highly functional and it does the job.''
The Hydrocycler, one of a small number of water bath based thermal cycling instruments currently available in the market place, uses a number of individually controlled water bath “ports” to enable the fast and accurate temperature changes required for tightly controlled PCR in a high throughput environment. The Hydrocycler uses an older thermal cycling - water bath - technology but is far more suited to high throughput applications than the more common Peltier based systems. Each Hydrocycler unit has 4 individually programmable bath temperatures and the in-built robotic system enables plates to be moved efficiently from one bath temperature to the next.
In addition, using a laser system to seal the plate prior to thermal cycling – as would be done in a high density 1536 plate in particular - the use of heat to seal a plate would not be possible, due to the potential to heat the sample and initiate the PCR reaction. The LGC Genomics Fusion™ laser sealing system overcomes this problem.
Jon Curtis, LGC Genomics Manufacturing Director and original designer of the Hydrocycler instrument said, “When we developed the first Hydrocycler it was done – as with much of our equipment – to help overcome a bottle neck in our own service laboratories. Obviously the instrumentation and the temperature control systems have been modified and improved over time but the use of water bath technology is essentially the same as it was when we simply moved tubes into different water baths while checking a stopwatch. Today the Hydrocycler’s ability to deliver extremely accurate control combined with automation and unrivalled PCR volumes put the instrument at the heart of our genotyping operations. There is simply no way we could run at the capacity we need to using the Peltier based technology and with this 100th instrument sale it is gratifying to know that our customers agree.”
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