Stovall Washes Whiter (And Quicker)

Stovall Life Sciences Inc. makes the fully automated Washing Machine™ for the repetitive tasks of processing blots, and staining and destaining gels. The Washing Machine from Stovall Life Sciences, Inc. When is a 30-minute job not a 30-minute job? When it includes intervals that are just too long to sit and do nothing and just too short to accomplish other tasks. The intervals get longer and longer, and, the 30-minute job ends up taking three times as long. Such is the case of processing Western blots. A 10-minute wash turns into 12 minutes, then 15 minutes, and hey, 20 minutes would make it cleaner still, right? But you have to show the results at your lab meeting in an hour, or it's 10 p.m. and you want to leave. What you need is to automate the whole procedure so you're free to gather more last-minute data or simply go home and sleep. Stovall Life Science, Inc., thought so too, so it developed the Washing Machine, a fully automated system to completely process Western blots and automatically stain and destain gels, wash nucleic-acid blots, and complete other repetitive washing tasks. The Washing Machine consists of syringes that hold antibodies or other reagents, as well as 4 L bottles for wash buffer and waste. The Cold Zone, an insulated box, maintains reagents at 4°C for over 20 hours to allow overnight applications. Solutions are automatically dispensed into the sample tray and aspirated after each step either into the waste receptacle or back into the Cold Zone for reuse, a key feature when dealing with expensive or hard-to-come-by antibodies. Forty-five stored programs in the ROM automate procedures, and additional user-friendly software for Mac or PC is available to allow storage of 45 to 90 additional custom programs in the machine's microprocessor memory. "We have a lot of people doing Western blots in our lab, and we have all designed our own programs for incubating and washing. It's nice to be able to launch my own program by just pushing a button," says Panos Anastasiadis, a postdoctoral researcher from the Department of Cell Biology at Vanderbilt Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn. "The Washing Machine really saves a lot of time. You can load it up in the evening and come back in the morning when your blot's all ready to develop," he says, "and being able to aspirate reagents back into cold storage is an essential feature for overnight applications." Because all aspects of the procedure--volume of reagents dispensed and incubation and wash times--are electronically controlled, results are reproducible. You don't have to worry about forgetting to change the wash buffer or which step you're up to, and because the automated procedure reduces the handling of gels and blots, there's less chance of damage or background artifacts. "We see much less background when we use the Washing Machine because the blots are washed better and more consistently than when we do the procedure manually," says Anastasiadis. Sample trays, which sit on top of any shaker platform, are designed for large gels or minigels. For small-volume applications, such as strip blots, a clip is available that fastens the reagent and aspiration ports to any container, facilitating incubations in as little as 2 mL. The clip can also be used for custom applications such as washing tissue sections. The number of reagents that can be loaded for fully automated operation is limited by the four available syringes. (If a reagent is aspirated back into the Cold Zone, only three remaining syringes are available for reagents.) However, "For procedures involving more than four reagents, many of our users perform additional steps manually, then complete the remaining steps automatically," says Ted Reynolds, president of Stovall. So go ahead, dazzle them at your next lab meeting with clean, artifact-free blots, hot off the press, along with the additional data you were able to compile in the time you saved. Or simply sleep well and come back to a processed blot in the morning. For additional information on this product, call Stovall Life Science, Inc., at (800) 852-0102. The author, Alison Paladichuk, is a free lance writer based in Irvine, Calif. She can be reached at spaladic@ix.netcom.com.

Stovall Washes Whiter (And Quicker)

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of