Invitrogen Unveils iBlot and iPrep to Expand Benchtop Instrument Collection

Invitrogen Corporation has announced the introduction of two instruments to complement technologies in its BioDiscovery business segment.

The iBlot™ Dry Blotting system transfers proteins from polyacrylamide gels to nitrocellulose membranes in preparation for downstream analysis, while the iPrep™ purification instrument automates nucleic acid purification using Invitrogen's ChargeSwitch™ technology.

"Invitrogen has a history of supplementing our leading reagent platforms with instrumentation that is both efficient and accessible, starting with our pre-cast gel systems and moving through protein electrophoresis systems and our recently launched Qubit fluorometer," said Kip Miller, Senior Vice President of Invitrogen's BioDiscovery business.

"With these new introductions, we are carrying forward this initiative-bringing significant improvement in the research process to every scientist."

"We are especially pleased to be, in the case of iPrep, launching our first internally-developed offering in the major instrumentation space."

Whereas traditional systems for transferring proteins from gels to membranes rely on complex buffering systems and layers of filter paper, iBlot uses two ion reservoir matrixes, allowing bufferless protein transfer in seven minutes.

Complemented by products from Invitrogen subsidiaries Zymed, BioSource and Molecular Probes, iBlot enhances Invitrogen's solutions for protein analysis.

iPrep builds upon the company's ChargeSwitch nucleic acid purification technology.

The system utilizes pre-filled reagent cartridges and standardized protocols to extract genomic DNA from a wide variety of samples-including tissue and blood specimens and samples collected during forensics work.

The iPrep is designed to eliminate labor-intensive steps in the DNA purification process, delivers consistent, pure DNA for downstream applications such as case work samples, paternity testing or clinical genotyping, and increases the success rate for isolating DNA from low quantity starting materials.

"The iPrep and iBlot instruments represent our commitment to developing user-friendly benchtop instrumentation that complements our key reagent systems," explained Kornelija Zgonc, Vice President of Engineering and Instrumentation for Invitrogen.

"By building out our instrumentation capabilities, we are able to offer our customers an even more complete approach to their applications than ever before."