Bio-Rad Laboratories has introduced the Ssofast Evagreen control assay, a pre-packaged kit that helps laboratories verify their real-time PCR instrument performance.
There are numerous occasions during a real-time PCR system's lifetime when it will be necessary or beneficial to run a control assay.
For example, in controlled pharma and biotechnology laboratories, researchers need to set up instrument qualification procedures to periodically verify that their instrument is performing as desired to meet regulatory needs.
The Ssofast Evagreen control assay can be easily incorporated into these instrument qualification procedures since it has already been validated on the Bio-Rad CFX96, CFX384, MyiQ2 and Miniopticon real-time PCR systems.
Large labs experiencing frequent personnel changes can use the control assay to train new users on real-time PCR experiment set up, instrument operation and data analysis, and to verify that all users can obtain consistent results.
Key performance metrics of the Ssofast Evagreen control assay include: broad dynamic range over six orders of magnitude, from 102 to 108 copies of template; greater than 90 per cent efficiency and R2 > 0.99 with good laboratory technique; fast run times (50min including a melt curve on the CFX96 real-time detection system).
The kit, which contains enough reagents to run a standard curve three times, includes control template DNA and primers, Ssofast Evagreen supermix, nuclease-free water, and recommended cycling protocols as well as instructions on how to set up a standard curve.
