Beads (or other) for Confocal QC

[Adrian Smith-6]

Dear all,

I've been looking at establishing some QC procedures for our new  
confocal. Browsing through the Invitrogen/Molecular Probes handbook I  
can see several bead product lines that look interesting (eg  
FocalCheck, TetraSpeck, InSpeck, PS-Speck).

Before I try to work out which products in particular look most useful  
(from the sometimes bewildering array of options) and then order what  
are relatively expensive reagents I'm interested to hear peoples'  
experiences with these products.

I'm sure there are other companies making similar products and I know  
there are completely different approaches to QC as well so any and all  
suggestions are most appreciated.

Regards,

Adrian Smith
Centenary Institute, Sydney, Australia

[Adrian Smith-6]

On 14/11/2008, at 3:49 PM, Adrian Smith wrote:

> Browsing through the Invitrogen/Molecular Probes handbook I can see  
> several bead product lines that look interesting (eg FocalCheck,  
> TetraSpeck, InSpeck, PS-Speck).

Forgot to note that I was particularly interested in products that  
will work with a violet laser. The Probes products above look like  
they may not be excited well by the 405 but it is always hard to tell  
with printed spectra...

Regards,

Adrian

[Sylvie Le Guyader-2]

Hi Adrian

Not sure if what you are after is beads of a calibrated size but if you only
want to see small fluorescent dots a cheap way is to dip a permanent ink
marker (textliner type) into water for a couple of second and mount the
solution. Mixing ink from markers of different colours might even give you
dots with different spectra. When in suspension in a glass bottom dish, this
ink is an excellent sample for TIRF.

Med vänlig hälsning / Best regards
 
Sylvie
 
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Sylvie Le Guyader
Dept of Biosciences and Nutrition
Karolinska Institutet
Novum
14157 Huddinge
Sweden
[phone]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List
> [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Adrian Smith
> Sent: 14 November 2008 06:44
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: Beads (or other) for Confocal QC
>
> On 14/11/2008, at 3:49 PM, Adrian Smith wrote:
>
> > Browsing through the Invitrogen/Molecular Probes handbook I can see
> > several bead product lines that look interesting (eg FocalCheck,
> > TetraSpeck, InSpeck, PS-Speck).
>
> Forgot to note that I was particularly interested in products that
> will work with a violet laser. The Probes products above look like
> they may not be excited well by the 405 but it is always hard to tell
> with printed spectra...
>
> Regards,
>
> Adrian