Taq PCR Core Kit From Qiagen

There are so many different Taq polymerases out there, I could hardly name a quarter of them. PCR is something that most labs are required to do at one time or another, especially when genotyping animals and creating mouse lines with various knockouts, recombinations and inserts. As part of my job, I routinely genotype mice for various labs which breed multiple strains of mice for use in functional studies of disease processes. Of all the kits and Taq polymerases that I have used, I have found the Qiagen Taq PCR Core Kit to be the most reliable and efficient.

The Qiagen PCR Kit comes with a ready supply of 10X buffer, 10 mM dNTPs, 25 mM MgCl₂, and Qiagen’s own 10X Q-solution all in one convenient box. The Q-solution claims to modify the melting behavior of DNA and is an optional buffer to use in suboptimal reactions. I always use it with the kit, however, as it has never hurt my reactions and can only help. I have found it to work much better than other PCR helpers, such as DMSO or betaine. The 5X PCR buffer claims to be optimized for a wider range of annealing temperatures and MgCl₂ concentrations. The kits now also come with a CoralLoad PCR Buffer containing a red dye that eliminates the need for dye addition before loading DNA onto an agarose gel. I have only used the CoralLoad buffer a couple of times, though, and it worked most of the time but it is really only another variable that I can do without. Besides, with the new Invitrogen E-Gel system, loading dye is no longer needed. Each of the buffers is color-coded so as not to mix them up and a basic PCR master mix is easy to set up. If I know that I am working with a tricky PCR or primers that are not as optimized as one would like, I always use this kit. It has worked several times where other basic Taq and MgCl₂ combinations have not.

The one drawback to the kit is the price, as it is definitely one of the most pricy out there. But the cost is offset by the time and reagents saved by eliminating any need to repeat the PCR, and is by far worth it. Unless I am running a highly optimized PCR reaction that always works, I usually opt for the Qiagen kit and reagents. There’s nothing better than only having to do something once….