The Infinite™ 200 series Quad-4 Monochromator™ microplate readers (spectrophotometers) manufactured by Tecan Group Ltd., Switzerland are sleek, bench-top units with a stylish and compact design. Tecan’s trademark Quad-4 technology is world-renowned for highly sensitive and reproducible spectral scans. The strength and highlight of Quad-4 technology is that it incorporates 4 monochromators, which consequently minimizes the reliance on cut-off filters for different wavelengths, unlike conventional dual monochromator-based readers. This significantly reduces false hits or artificial peak shifts. The use of 4 monochromators, therefore, enables highly consistent spectral scanning performance over the entire wavelength spectrum. The product literature also states that Quad-4 technology increases the scan time of fluorescent scans by 6 times compared to microplate readers with 2 monochromators using cut-off filters, although I have not compared this attribute myself.
Microplate readers are an essential part of almost any chemical or biological laboratory in the world today. The applications for their use are quite diverse, but mostly revolve around the quantification of a host of macromolecules such as DNA, RNA and proteins. I use the Infinite 200 series microplate readers to quantify proteins from a BSA assay or DNA extracted from various plant tissues at 260 nm wavelength. The Infinite 200 series has presets or defaults for a number of commonly used quantification kits for DNA, RNA and proteins. For example, they support the BSA and Bradford-Lowry protein assays, and the fluorescent dye-based DNA and RNA real-time PCR quantification products, such as Picogreen® and Ribogreen®.
Our Infinite 200 microplate reader is connected to a Sony Viao laptop which provides a very user-friendly interface. The software loads quickly and requires a 10 second automatic machine initialization step. Users are then provided an option to select the type of microplate they are using. The pull-down list is quite exhaustive and covers most major microplate suppliers as well as the different types and formats available. Selecting the correct one ensures the machine automatically optimizes its settings so the results generated have absolutely minimal interference from the equipment used. The left-hand menu taskbar has a number of options for the applications available, and these can be dragged and dropped onto the main analysis window as required. Simple selections can also be made by dragging the cursor to specify the part of the microplate which the user wants to read. Scan times are about 20 seconds for 96-well plates and 30 seconds for 384-well plates (full-plate read), which is considerably faster than some of the spectrophotometers I’ve used in the past. Results are then automatically generated as an excel spreadsheet with all the critical information provided in a very neat format. This makes it very easy for downstream data analysis. A simple USB transfer of the excel file and your work is done!
I’ve been very impressed by this product for its ease of use, high sensitivity, accurate readings and aesthetically pleasing design. It is highly recommended to anyone who is considering adding a microplate reader to their repertoire of laboratory equipment.
Research Fellow
Plant Immunity Research Team
RIKEN Plant Science Center