Did you know with its range of Catalog and Custom OciChip™ arrays, Ocimum Biosolutions offers one of the biggest microarray portfolios in the market.
In addition to microarrays, Ocimum offers spotting services for all kinds of biological samples: DNA, RNA, proteins, or peptides, which can be distributed on a variety of substrates and surface chemistries. Ocimum’s microarray laboratory team is experienced in using different spotting buffers and can customize projects from low to very high density spotting.
One of our customers, Johannes Zerweck (Lab. Head, Peptide Arrays at JPT Peptide Technologies GmbH, Germany), often uses our services to spot peptides. In collaboration with JPT, our R&D team has optimized the printing conditions to a high performance – high density peptide array.
Did you know Ocimum Biosolutions’ range of microarray products includes two different hybridization buffers. The formamide-based buffer (Catalog no.
1180-000010) follows a standard recipe and is optimized for low-volume hybridizations using cover slips. The salt-based hybridization buffer (Catalog no.
1180-200000) is specifically developed to allow higher-volume hybridizations such as, with GeneFrame provided with any OciChip™ or automated hybridization chambers. Higher-volume hybridizations offer the advantage of even distribution of signals and therefore, improved performance.
While developing a hybridization buffer, some components have to be carefully adjusted to avoid bias or limitations in the dynamic range such as stringency conditions, overall intensities, and signal-to-background ratios. Ocimum Biosolutions’ salt-based buffer avoids formamide completely, and uses other (non-toxic) ingredients to adjust the right stringency conditions. After extensively testing using different formulas, urea was found to give the best performance: a very high dynamic range and a very low background or non-specific binding. Ocimum Biosolutions’ salt-based hybridization buffer was developed simultaneously with OciChip™ arrays, and they give the best results when used together. Nevertheless, many of our customers use our salt-based hybridization buffer with other microarrays also.
The salt-based hybridization buffer is available in aliquots of 5 ml.
