I have been a big fan of DreamTaq by Thermo Scientific but have found it problematic in amplifying certain avian gene fragments.
Further more to test efficacy of various enzymes. I ran two identical PCRs with bacterial samples. 1 using DreamTaq and 1 use Platinum PFX. In each PCR two different bacteria were used. In both PCRs only one bacterial 16s was amplified, however the same species were not amplified. Ie Sample A in PCR 1 and Sample B in PCR 2.
I've seen this before as well, I'm not sure why but I worked used to with Tetrahymena in grad school and the enzyme I used for real time that worked great with Tetrahymena did not work well at all with human samples. I'm not exactly sure about those particular enzymes but they could have differential amplification capabilities if there are major differences in the sequences you are trying to amplify. For example, one enzyme may be much more efficient at amplifying GC rich sequences than the other. Do you know if these enzymes can perform these pcr reactions when there is only one bacterial DNA to amplify at a time? That would at least say if they can amplify it or if they just prefer the other sequence.
Dream Taq is a hot start Taq polymerase. Where as Platinum pFX is a hot start mix with Taq polymerase and a proof reading polymerase. The later is good for longer templates (more than 1 kb).
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