384 well plate - do u have ever used?? (May/14/2008 )

please share your experience/disadvantages to use 384 well plate for real time PCR

i've used 384 well plates with the roche lC480.

the only disadvantage i have reckognized was a slightly decreased sensitivity (about 1 Ct). maybe due to reduced fluorescence intensity because of less reaction volume (10µl instead of 20µl).
another complication could be that manual pipetting is really challenging. i did >10 plates with about 280 samples (always the same sample layout) on each but i drawed some kind of "pipetting map" which i sticked on the plate (all empty wells were covered and with additional well inscriptions). but with this help it was easier than a 96-well plate.


advantage:
cheaper because you need less reagents
more experiments possible because you can use less cDNA for one reaction (important if you work with clinical samples)
you can pack more samples on a plate = better comparison
faster

We are running 10ul reactions od 96well plates (on LC480 too) so we have all the advantages of lower volume.

I'd say if you don't have a robot, or need to amplificate a mass of samples at the same time, it's not very good idea to go for 384. More problems.

we have performed real time with 384 well plates, its tedious without a robotic arm help but nonetheless with 10ul rexns it works fine, only sometimes the duplicate rexns have shown variation, that too one in 140 wells. so i guess its ok.......

navrinder