Bio-Rad Laboratories ChemiDoc Touch Imaging System has been launched as a significant advance in chemiluminescent western blot detection, surpassing the performance of film.
The system allows detection of faint bands missed by film and produces publication-quality images. It is designed to outperform film in other ways as well.
When using film to image abundant proteins, strong bands quickly saturate and become unquantifiable. Saturated bands can also obscure the signal from adjacent faint bands, making western blotting with film challenging.
The ChemiDoc Touch addresses these issues through its wide dynamic range, permitting easy and reliable quantification even of highly abundant proteins, and through the instrument’s ability to optimise exposure for each protein of interest.
Ernesto Diaz-Flores, an assistant adjunct professor at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) conducted early tests on the Bio-Rad product.
Diaz-Flores used the imager to simultaneously measure protein expression level changes of up to 30 different proteins in samples from leukemia patients to understand how gene mutations alter protein pathways that might represent novel therapeutic targets.
“My goal in collaborating on this project with Bio-Rad was to help develop the next generation technology required to advance protein quantification analysis and their impact in research,” said Diaz-Flores.
“We found that the technology outperformed film and other imaging technologies as it allowed us to simultaneously visualise and quantitate both high and low expression proteins in a matter of seconds. It also allowed us to determine fold induction or protein reduction in high resolution and correlate these levels to drug response in multiple protein assays in a time efficient manner.”
ChemiDoc Touch is designed to offer a smooth, intuitive user experience that makes capturing, reviewing, selecting, and exporting images efficient and straightforward.
The imager allows stain-free imaging, using technology exclusive to Bio-Rad.
With V3 Western Workflow, researchers can quickly determine whether their western blot is proceeding as planned using the imager at multiple built-in checkpoints.
Researchers can also use stain-free technology to perform total protein normalisation for easier and more reliable protein quantification.
