Hmm. I bet I know what equipment is getting written into the budget for the next grant...
Our Millipore rep hooked us up with some 8-well Millipore EZ slides, and I think I'm in love (with the slides, not the rep, although he's nice enough, but I digress).
These are fantastic little buggers if you're doing immunostaining on cells. Culture your cells on these things and then you can do all your fixation, washing, and staining with the wells on. When you're done, the little tabs on the side just snap off and the wells separate easily from the slide (as opposed to some other chamber slide systems that require a special tool). Plus I'm able to get away with 100 µl solution per well, so I can screen an entire dilution series with relatively little antibody. They are expensive, but no more so than BD chamber slides, and I'll take the Millipore ones over BD anyday.
We use the same type of chamber slides from LabTek
Chamber slides are so much better than culturing on coverslips. That, my friends, is a pain in the ass.
Yay! Thanks Belle! OK- one more donation it is then.
I'm still in love with the LI-COR Odyssey western blot imaging system. Costs an absolute bomb but I was lucky enough that my PhD lab was rolling in it and bought one in my final year, such an awesome machine, you can probe multiple antibodies at once, and you don't feel like blind as a mole emerging from the dark room with your western. It sucks to have to go back to dark room developing after that!
@BiochemBelle - I agree the TOPO cloning kit is usually awesome, have always used it no problems. But the PCR product I'm currently cloning appears to be toxic and I can't damn well get any colonies that have my insert in the correct orientation, so I am a little peeved with TOPO cloning at the moment!
I also agree that Cell Signaling antibodies are the bomb and I haven't found any company that beats Qiagen's DNA preps yet.
I worked for a small distributor. Ya'll mentioned the Lab Armor beads, those are great. They are a luxury item, so most labs "can't afford" them, however, the labs that do purchase the beads, love 'em.
Based on consumer feedback and their resistance to change brands regardless of pricing, TPP cell culture products are like gold. Its expensive to buy, but once I converted any lab to TPP, they didn't switch again.
I would have to go with the ABI PRISM in our lab. Probably the only thing that makes my work day interesting. LOL.
JanedeLartigue, if you are looking for DNA prep kits that are comparable, possibly better than Qiagen's, our purchasing manager came across a small company called chimerx, and I would highly recommend trying theirs out. We've been using them ever since, mostly due to budget issues (they are relatively inexpensive). We couldn't be happier with them, and don't forsee going back to Qiagen.
Check out their website: www.chimerx.com
Also, I'm a pretty big fan of anything NEB.
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