7500 Real-Time PCR System From Applied Biosystems

The concept of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) fully deserved the Nobel Prize (awarded in 1993 to its creator Kary Mullis). The recent advances and especially development of the quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR, also knows as real-time PCR) make that methodology a staple of almost any biological laboratory, with myriads of applications in almost any bioscience discipline. In qPCR, DNA amplification is monitored in real time using fluorescent dyes. This improvement provides more accurate and sensitive measurements, of e.g. gene expression, pathogen detection, and allelic discrimination, than traditional (end-point) PCR. To achieve high quality results of qPCR, a superb apparatus is needed and this is where you can turn to the Applied Biosystems 7500 Real-Time PCR System.

The 7500 is a very reliable platform with a high quality Peltier-based heating block providing uniform heating (and cooling) of all the wells. It works equally well with both, 96-well plates and 0.2 ml tubes. Convenient features include the real-time monitoring of amplification curves and the ability to adjust cycle profiles even during the run. I have been using this machine to detect expression of many protein-encoding genes and to determine drug-induced changes in the expression of these genes. I also use it routinely to measure expression of various microRNA species. The sensitivity of the Applied Biosystems 7500 Real-Time PCR System makes the qPCR method a truly quantitative tool of gene expression, as we are able to detect molecules in almost single-digit numbers in an individual cell. Another advantage of the Applied Biosystems 7500 Real-Time PCR System is that it can be easily upgraded for high-speed thermal cycling, cutting down time of the amplification.

On the flip-side, the software is a little bit inconvenient to use. When certain wells are highlighted they correspond automatically to their amplification plots which are color-coded. If a few more wells are then added, plots randomly change their colors. This feature is hard to follow and can make you confused. It would be really advantageous to fix that aspect of the software. Besides that little glitch, Applied Biosystems 7500 Real-Time PCR System is a very powerful machine for modern-day molecular biology.