Bio-Rad eBook - 2019 - 18

Meet the Innovators...
applications out there. We're in a unique position
to know the customer's needs because we've been
doing Western blotting for a very long time.

"Multiplexing is very important
for an imaging system, and for
western blotting specifically,
because it makes your life much
more efficient."
What drove the development of the new
ChemiDoc MP?
Our legacy instrumentation was wanting in a few
spaces. Sensitivity was pretty good, but we still
wanted to do better. Resolution was perceived
as insufficient, and multiplexing capabilities were
really starting to be demanded by our customers.
So, we had to put all those together in a single
package, which led us to go to a completely new
platform, with a completely new camera, in order
to fulfill all these needs.
What are the advantages of multiplexing?
Multiplexing is very important for an imaging
system, and for western blotting specifically,
because it makes your life much more efficient.
You can put multiple antibodies on one membrane,
which saves you money and time. It allows you
to do things you couldn't do with separate blots.
It's difficult to judge how much relative sample
you have from one blot to another. If you have
everything on one membrane, you can compare
expression levels of one antigen to another, and
you can do phosphorylation studies.

18

What motivates you in your work?
As a scientist, data integrity is extremely important
to me. I design instruments as if I'm going to
be the one using them. Bio-Rad has been very
adamant about the quality of the data forever in its
imaging instruments. We have patents on image
correction for blot and gel sampling from the 90's.
So, we have quite a track record of working on
these problems and how to solve them. And we
have more patents this century, regarding how to
calibrate and improve imaging quality.
Do you feel you accomplished your goals in
the ChemiDoc MP project?
I consider the ChemiDoc MP to be the best system
out there for a number of reasons. One: It's breadth
of capabilities. This thing can do your nucleic acid
samples, it can do your acrylamide samples, and
it can do your western blotting samples. We're not
really restricting a customer to do what our system
can do. We have a system that allows the customer
to do what they want to do.
What other features of the instrument are
you particularly proud of?
We spent a lot of time with the user interface.
This is really important. I can make the greatest,
most powerful, whiz-bang thing in the world, but
if somebody can't use it, it has no value. If we
can't make a piece of equipment that enables a
scientist to go out and get data easily, quickly, and
accurately, then we failed. It's very, very important
that we enable scientists to get their job done. I
think that this system is the best option out there for
multiplex imaging that a customer can get, if they
want to enable themselves to do their science. l

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Bio-Rad eBook - 2019

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