As a result of the recent inquiries on assisting with COVID-19 tests, we are providing a few steps to help you identify what is needed. The FDA has approved many COVID-19 testing kits and some of them are compatible with the ABI 7500 regular, 7500 Fast, and 7500 Fast DX. Please consider the following instructions to assist you in choosing the correct one.

Please let me interrupt your day to make you aware of a situation.  We have just been made aware that several of our customers have received a suspicious email structured to appear as an invoice.      First off, this is not our format for invoices.   Secondly, all invoices are generated from Quickbooks.   Third, all invoices will be generated from one email: quickbooks@notification.intuit.com  NEVER from any individual.   We hope these have been caught by your internal spam filters, if not then please do not open and delete.   If you ever have any questions surrounding an emails received, please don't hesitate to contact SeqGen to verify the legitimacy of its content.     Our direct business line is 877-377-3743.  

Spring is officially here, and that means more sunlight to enjoy outside. With that in mind, I made a comment to my loving husband. Our deck's wooden boards have started to show the effects of seasonal heat, rain, and snow through the years. To prevent further damage, I suggested that we replace the decayed boards now and consider switching to composite in the future. And with that, I was off to CrossFit. I was only gone for an hour, but upon my return, I was shocked to find my deck was no more! In only 60 minutes, my husband and father-in-law had removed the surface boards to discover there was deeper decay in the support beams. Sometimes, the real issue isn't visible on the surface. You have to tear away the top layer to find the underlying problem.  

This year, I went a little overboard with my New Year’s resolutions. I'm all in, and by all in, I mean I have joined every gym and exercise class possible. In addition to CrossFit, I have started kickboxing, Krav Maga, indoor cycling, a running club, and I might even try yoga. After all, what better time to strive for change and self-improvement than the new year? Sure, we can commit to new habits any time of the year, but undeniably, there is more motivation once the calendar changes to January 1. Along with your goals for personal growth, what about making a resolution related to business?

As new technology is developed and introduced to the marketplace, you may have heard a nasty rumor that the manufacturer will no longer be offering support or maintenance on older machines like the ABI 3130/xl Genetic Analyzer, or 7900HT qPCR.  You might have even gotten a notice that effectively says that you’ll have to upgrade to a newer model if you want to keep your lab operational.  Sure, these machines have improved functionality and can make a lab more efficient, but the bottom line is this unnecessary upgrade is costly and just doesn’t make sense for a lot of labs.

Many of our users have found that when using water for injections instead of Hi-Di formamide, they end up with issues that prevent base calling, even when following the machine standards. Proper technique should produce signal strengths well above the minimum threshold when samples are resuspended in formamide.

However, if you are still having issues with signal strength, you can try resuspending your samples in water, since this can increase signal strength by over 10x. If you do try employing water for injections, make sure you’re cautious of these three things:

There’s been a lot going on here at SeqGen recently. In addition to introducing our Next-Gen Sequencing Division, we’ve also been working on some internal processes to increase the efficiency of our service. And last month, all of our hard work was recognized when we received our International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001:2015 certification.

We all know that the reagents for your sequencers and qPCR machines aren’t cheap, so of course everyone is looking for any and every way to save on these supplies. With a bottle of polymer costing a few hundred dollars, you learn quickly that it is not to be wasted. Luckily, some very bright people work with these machines every day and they’ve come up with some ingenious ways to get the most out of your polymer.

If you’ve been using your MiSeq for any length of time, you know that cluster density is a crucial part of NGS to generate the best and most data possible. Under-clustering and over-clustering your data will result in similar errors since your machine will not be able to find the best cluster focus in either case. In order to get the most data possible out of each of your runs, you’ll need to find your “sweet spot” to get the most usable data.

For every problem you may encounter with any of your machines, we are here to help you find the solution. If your 3130 or 3730 is giving  you an error which reads: “Electrical Discharge Error,” one of the possible causes could be an issue with your pump’s one-way check valve . The error may indicate that the valve is malfunctioning, resulting in the back-flow of liquid to the polymer bottle. This leads to incomplete filling of your array and causes the old polymer to remain in the capillary.  The end result is a bad spatial intensity, as well as an electrical discharge error.