Life Science Tools of the Trade

Due to the increasing fuzz problem from Qiagen maxi preps our lab has decided to make the jump to new kits and I think we’ve finally settled on the winner. We tried the eppendorf kit but after merely reading the instructions decided that kit wouldn’t work. Who wants a kit where the resin isn’t already in the column? The Sigma kit was all right but you need to elute your DNA in a fairly large volume. The kit ahead of the race right now is Roche’s. Their Genopure kits have given the best results with a small amount of change. The kit is essentially the same as Qiagen kits-alkaline lysis that you bind to the column and then elute. The major differences are: the Roche kits are CHEAPER and you DO NOT get any of the proverbial fuzz. After completing the Roche kit it was amazing to see the whole precipitated pellet resuspend.

The irony to the whole story is that we finally got a Qiagen rep that we would like to deal with but the product was lacking.