Introducing a New Tabletop System for Image Capture of Labeled Biomolecules

While designed with chemiluminescent Western blotting in mind, an innovative new image analysis instrument is able to handle a wide variety of stained media including fluorescent proteins, DNA gel stains, and white light imaging of colorimetric stains and markers.

The GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, United Kingdom) ImageQuant LAS 500 was designed for fast and easy imaging of chemiluminescent Western blots. In addition, the system is fully equipped for Deep Purple Total Protein Stain, UV fluorescent DNA gels stained with SYBR Green or ethidium bromide, and Coomassie Blue or silver stained gels.

The system boasts optimized F/1.4 (30 mm) optics and a sensitive 8.3 megapixel closed circuit camera specifically for chemiluminescense. The fixed focus lens cools to -25 °C in less than five minutes, enabling rapid image capture. Combined with binning and advanced read-out technology this significantly reduces noise levels and improves both the sensitivity and linearity of the system so that protein in quantities as low as five picograms may be reliably quantitated.

The ImageQuant LAS 500 features an intelligent autoexposure system. There is no need to focus, adjust, or calibrate the instrument. The user simply selects the imaging method, and the system takes care of the rest.

All tasks on the ImageQuant LAS 500 are controlled via an integrated touchscreen including the automatic overlay function, which allows users to compare chemiluminescent samples to colored molecular weight markers and estimate the detected proteins’ size and orientation on the membrane. The ImageQuant LAS 500 instrument saves valuable space on the lab bench by being about the same size as a typical laptop computer (30 x 28 cm). The fully integrated system does not require a dedicated PC: using the intuitive analysis software; images can either be stored or transferred via a network connection to other devices.

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