A sexy new machine

Yesterday I ran an experiment to test whether my failed Friday the 13th real-time PCR was due to bad master mix or a bad machine. I ran a very simple set of reactions using a dilution series of chromosomal DNA as template. Reactions were run with old or new master mix on the new real-time PCR machine in the lab next door. All primers generated nice amplification plots regardless of which master mix was used, thus my Friday the 13th problems were caused by our old machine. Today I have repeated my experiment from last month, but data analysis is going slowly as I learn how to use the new analysis software. Even with the frustrations that often arise when learning one's way through fancy new software, I am generally impressed with the newer machine and software. In the 5 years since our previous analysis software was developed, data visualization and interactiveness has come a long way. Now that I've had my coffee, it's time for another session of real-time analysis.