Alternative Sources of BigDye XTerminator

[Dynamac]

Does anyone know of alternatives to Life Technologies for this reagent? Since their acquisition of ABI, our cost has nearly doubled, and the costs for other reagents have increased as well.

Thanks!

Barry

[Elcannibal]

Does anyone know of alternatives to Life Technologies for this reagent? Since their acquisition of ABI, our cost has nearly doubled, and the costs for other reagents have increased as well.

Thanks!

Barry

I don't think you will get an answer for this because:
1- BDT is the biggest cash cow for Life Tech and always was (brings back memories of the acronym ABI, good ld days I must say).
2- It will keep going up ie stock market, gold watches private jet.
3- IP, is what drives innovation, without it, no funding, unless of course it is for a cure, then it would likely be about 100x the price.

You should do the following, order bulk, order within 3 weeks of a final quarter (end of March, June, Sept, Dec), tell your rep you will not order before the end of the month unless there is significant discount. Final solution is to move over to ET Terminator chemistry from GE. Pretty similar and much lower in cost but expect a support embargo from Life.

Don't expect more than 15%, BDT is the most controlled ingredient at Life.

[han526]

Have you tried magnetic beads based kits?

What I found is that once you optimize the conditions (mostly robotic handling), the magnetic beads purification works very well. Use less Dye terminator, clean and long reads. You may try PureSEq or CleanSEQ. Xteminator is propriatory. Life tech has a monopoly there.

[Dynamac]

Thanks all, for the input. Life offered me 12%. I'll have to have discussions with our client about the alternatives.

[athensugadawg]

MagBead-based DTR

when optimized on a robotic platform, e.g Beckman, Hamilton, Tecan (can use manually as well), will allow you to effectively take your BigDye dilution down to 1:16 for shotgun and 1:32 for PCR product. Cost per prep is quite favorable as well....Omega Bio-tek has a product that could possibly fit your needs.

[MrGuy]

I thought the guy was talking about xterminator and not BigDye? Agencourt makes a competitive product.

The best way to decrease the cost of xterminator is to run a 5-10 ul BigDye reaction vs the 20uL you are likely running now.

[Dynamac]

I was talking about XTerminator. We doing a 1/8 reaction at 10 µL volume now.

[MrGuy]

Same here, but we run 1/4 reaction with a 25 minute sanger cycling.

[Dynamac]

While we're on the subject, another question about the 3730xl DNA Analyzer. What effect does oven temperature have on separation? If I lower the temp, will the separation be better?

[MrGuy]

Consider it this way...
You have a signal moving past a camera with a finite number of pictures it can take over certain time. To increase resolution, you would want more pictures per signal, right?

Thus, you can increase resolution by slowing the flow with:
1) longer path (capillary)
2) lower voltage (slower migration)
3) thicker polymer (I just stick with pop7 so I don't have to change anything)
4) colder oven (thicker polymer)
5) cold window (3130 has a heated window, can't remember if the 3730 has it).

So, basically just find a slow default run module, shorten or lengthen the time as it fits your product, then make some fine adjustments with your oven temp if you prefer.

[Dynamac]

Thanks, MrGuy.

I don't think the 3730 supports anything other than Pop7, we're stuck with a 50-cm array, so we'll have to try to vary the voltage and oven temperature. We have short products, so we may never resolve them.

Barry

[MrGuy]

How short is short? I used to sequence realtime products every now and then on a 36cm with the UltraSeq module/pop7

[Dynamac]

100 bp! These are for a client. They may be qPCR products, I'm not sure.

[MrGuy]

Throw on M13 tails and sequence through the primer. You'll gain a few bases that you need.

[pmiguel]

The oven temp is designed to keep the product strand denatured so you end up with less product strand compression events.

For your application you might want to abandon big dye for the ancient "dRhodamine" chemistry. Big Dye's bulky fluors contribute to the lower quality of sequence very close to the primer. (You probably need to run a spectral for it, but I am not sure.)

Keep in mind that the low quality of the sequence may be a result of those PCR products being contaminated with primer dimers, not some issue with migration rates.

I would think that the 3730XL could handle other polymers. Might want to post on the ABRF forum. Higher density of first-gen experts there. Also, check with ABI tech support. Some times they come through.

--
Phillip