Has anybody tried or use white plates (non-transparent) for Applied Biosystems 7500 Real-Time PCR machine. Are the plates provide better performance? What about background calibration?
Particularly Some companies has designed plates which are suitable for Real Time PCR which you cant use for Other real time PCR you have to check the specifications. As I have used AB7500 RTPCR, we have brought plates from Thermoscientific which worked very well for us and may be this is useful link for you:
Eppendorf white-welled plates fit the GeneAmp 5700 ABI machine perfectly and work extremely well. Assuming that the 7500 block is very similar to the 5700, these plates should work. They are much cheaper than the AB plates as well - but seem higher quality at the same time. I have also noticed that variance of Cq values between technical replicate wells is smaller with the white-welled plates.
They are (Eppendorf by way of Fisher) cat. no. E951022043, 25-pack. They maximize refelctivity of signal with the flood-lamp technology that AB machines use...
I've heard of StepOne Plus calibration problems - but have not heard much about ABI7500 calibration problems. If the 7500 still uses the green calibration plate to set ROIs and plate illumination intensity I wouldn't think that you would have calibration issues. Really I can't speak to the 7500's calibration issues though (if it might have them or not), but, I highly doubt that white-welled plates would be a source of calibration issues.
Marcin, there is a company (I've forgotten which) that purposely makes blue-colored mastermix so one can see better when loading white-welled plates. Indeed - this is their only draw-back. They do work extremely well though - glad you got a positive feeling from them. I still use them and try to stay extremely focused when loading - absolutely no interruptions from PI's or lab mates is a great thing at these times.