Hi Carlos

We have a bunch of them. One might be perfect for your throughput, however to be honest no one at my institute uses them (only the genomics core for one specialised project..which is finished now) as it takes just as long to do the minipreps by yourself.. that and you can only do 12 at a time.

The biggest down side is that you still have to resuspend, lyse and neutralise yourself, and then also load each column... once you've done that you're pretty much most of the way through the technique and so it's not worth most people's hassle. But like I said, as you aren't doing too many, and as you are doing it every day, it may actually work for you. The only down side i see with that is that you're not doing a multiple of 12 preps so it might be worth you upscaling to 24 per day, or down to 12 to make the most of the added efficiency.

Good luck

Al

I found it to be a colossal waste of time- took the Qiacube about an hour to purify RNA using Qiagen RNeasy kit (12 samples max/hr), when I can do the same by hand in about 20 minutes. It was about $12k when the person I worked for bought it 2 years ago.

Hello Carlos,

I don't use this machine, but here you can find the prize:

http://www.qiagen.com/products/automation/qiacube.aspx#Tabs=t0

Not cheap...

Dear Carlos, I am using Qiagen Qiacube and i admit it is very useful! It is very handy. Total RNA extraction, made on 600 microliter lysate, is near 1000-2000 ng/ul, with a purity score (RIN in Agilent Nano6000 capillary electrphoresis) close to 10,0. You can make a cellular lysate, either cell colture or tissue and put this onto the qiacube device. By less than 2 hours you'll reach your 30 or 50 microliters of total purified RNA (using Qiashredder). If you want I can give you more insights at [email protected], whenever you want, you can take a contact with me.

Bye

Best wishes

Salvatore

In my experience it doesn't actually save you that much time, since the thing that takes the most time is preparing or thawing the samples and tubes, which you have to do yourself anyway. I don't know what price it is, but when my lab bought one it was definitely seen as an expensive piece of kit. We used it for RNA prep, but I always thought that by the time you had loaded all the buffers and tubes etc you could have whizzed through at least half the procedure. I think it adds an unnecessary level of complication.

We have one and use it daily. If you program it correctly, it can do the entire miniprep after you spin down the bacteria pellet. Although it does not complete it faster, it enables me to do other things while it is working.

Thank you very much for your kind answer, I has been very helpful. I see that the main limitation is that only work with 12 samples and i far as i understood the protocol are not faster but you save time because you are doing other things in the meantime. However, another limitation is that everything is closer and you must change for every change in the protocol.

Thank you again.

Carlos

I bought a Qiacube which was left in standby by our colleagues genetists and I payd (my Department, obviously) about 6,000 €, if I remembrer correctly. Then, a possible good prize ranges from 6,000 to 8,000 € about 5,000-7,000 $. Sincerely, is only a picking-up device with a centrifuge and a very easy software...nothing else..It should not be so expensive...

Let us know if you need further information/demo set-up, someone would be happy to call you regarding your concerns like changing protocols which can be customized as per your need, the results are comparable to manual processes. I hope I am not too late and believe you are still considering automation of your sample preparation.

Qiagen Team

Does anyone have experiences with QIAcube HT (96-well nucleic acid purification)? I  know of some troublemaking about automation (unexpected block)

Qiacube is a total waste of money. This is my opinion. It only purifies 12 samples at every turn. If your have an automatic homogenizer and extraction kit, than you do not need Qiacube. Frankly, manual methods such as CTAB are better.

Good luck.