Hello everyone,
Has anyone ever used a black colour PCR tube? I have seen only transparent and white colour tubes, but never a black one. From the logic of fluorescence they should yield more signal to noise ratio in qPCR, since the tube is black and would absorb more excitation light. Of course it would limit the usage, as those type of tubes could only be used in qPCR machines that has a confocal fluorescence optical scheme and imaging from the top.
Can any one share their finding or experience?
Pavel Bankovsky
I have seen transparent, pink, yellow and light-blue ones. I haven't seen black PCR tubes. But, you can always run the PCR in a dark room. There is no such product, probably is because it is hard to see the DNA samples (from the pipet) when you try to load it into the reaction buffer inside the tube (vision blocked). Especially for a very small amount of DNA template.
I would try searching for 'light-sensitive tubes' as these would be opaque to protect light-sensitive reagents.
I hope you find what you are looking for.
Fluorometric assays like caspase assay use dark plates. If the signal is read from above, the plates are completely dark (black), but if the signal is read from below, then the bottom of the plates is transparent. Dark walls avoid detection of neighboring wells.
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