Bioanalyzer not recognising the chip - chip misaligned/manufacturing problem? - (Apr/15/2010 )
Trying to run an RNA pico chip on the Agilent Bioanalyzer. We couldn't get the machine to recognise that the chip was loaded, so had to throw the chip away and start again. People have suggested it was either insufficient volume in the wells, so we added extra liquid, but no change.
Someone else said it might be a manufacturing problem with the chip, and when we looked at the wells, the circles within each well appeared to be misaligned. It wasn't the reflection on the meniscus, as the alignment was the same when I turned around. I compared this to another chip, and the other one seemed to be more aligned (with a concentric circle visible within each well). It's easier to see looking at the chip from the bottom.
Has anyone had this problem, and know why this happened? Cheers.
jamessmith01 on Apr 15 2010, 06:44 AM said:
Someone else said it might be a manufacturing problem with the chip, and when we looked at the wells, the circles within each well appeared to be misaligned. It wasn't the reflection on the meniscus, as the alignment was the same when I turned around. I compared this to another chip, and the other one seemed to be more aligned (with a concentric circle visible within each well). It's easier to see looking at the chip from the bottom.
Has anyone had this problem, and know why this happened? Cheers.
Agilent BioAnalyzer sucks big time... You are not the only one having such problems. The one in our lab has been collecting dust for almost a year now. I never thought of examining the chips, though. Any way, this is a finicky instrument. A real PITA.
ProteinWork on Apr 15 2010, 11:17 PM said:
jamessmith01 on Apr 15 2010, 06:44 AM said:
Someone else said it might be a manufacturing problem with the chip, and when we looked at the wells, the circles within each well appeared to be misaligned. It wasn't the reflection on the meniscus, as the alignment was the same when I turned around. I compared this to another chip, and the other one seemed to be more aligned (with a concentric circle visible within each well). It's easier to see looking at the chip from the bottom.
Has anyone had this problem, and know why this happened? Cheers.
Agilent BioAnalyzer sucks big time... You are not the only one having such problems. The one in our lab has been collecting dust for almost a year now. I never thought of examining the chips, though. Any way, this is a finicky instrument. A real PITA.
Yeah a lot of people here hate it too. So how do you test your RNA quality - just on a gel? Good thing about the Bioanalyzer is you need hardly any material... bad thing is, if it doesn't work, you usually have no idea why!
jamessmith01 on Apr 16 2010, 05:04 AM said:
I am not an expert on RNA experiments so I don't know how to answer your question. We used to screen some RNA samples for other labs so we bought the bioanalyzer. I think that project has either finished or got pulled the plug. I wasn't involved in that project enough to know the details.
Run the official test procedures ...this will tell you if there is something wrong with the machine.
Regards,
p