Yearly Archives: 2012
Have You Serviced Your MAGPIX® This Year?
In addition to your daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance of the MAGPIX® instrument, there are preventative procedures you should perform every six and twelve months to keep your unit running smoothly year-round, and to help alleviate the wear and tear on your work-horse unit. Refer to your MAGPIX User Manual for step-by-step instructions. The Daily,
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What is DNA Methylation, and Can I Use Luminex Technology to Study It?
DNA methylation is a type of epigenetic change, and epigenetic changes are modifications to genes other than the underlying sequence of DNA or RNA. DNA methylation is essential for the normal development and functioning of many organisms and has been detected in every vertebrate examined. It is a very simple addition of a methyl group
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Manual MagPlex® Bead Washing–Keep the Beads in Your Plate, Not the Sink!
Not using the most efficient way to wash your beads can often lead to lost sample and beads—something we try to prevent! Check out the easy steps below for ways to help your manual MagPlex® bead washing process, and help keep your beads in your plate! Method The assay plate is placed on the Luminex
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How Well Do You Know Your Sample Probe?
Some of the most common hardware problems that occur in the field are related to the sample probe. Is your instrument failing calibration or verification? Are you getting low bead count on your assay results? This could be due to the probe height adjustment, a clog, or a bent probe. Luckily, most of these issues can be solved through
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This Year’s Flu Vaccine – Why is it Different, and Why Does it Matter?
It’s getting close to to that time of year again, and you’re probably wondering how not to get sick with the flu, aren’t you? While Luminex can help your physician diagnose you once you get sick, wouldn’t you rather avoid the flu altogether? How do you avoid getting the flu? For most people, the easiest
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Top 3 Tips When Performing Luminex Clinical Diagnostic Assays
Luminex Clinical Diagnostic assays designed on xTAG® Technology enable a large number of clinical specimens to be analyzed quickly, cost-effectively, and accurately. When performing these assays, remembering these few technical tips will help you generate optimal results. (And remember to always follow the package insert instructions for use.) Tip #1: Prepare the RT-PCR Mastermix and add
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How Do I Validate This Assay When I Don’t Have Positive Specimens?
One almost universal frustration in validating a new assay is sourcing the appropriate clinical samples. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a source for your positive test specimens? Validating a new clinical diagnostic molecular assay can be extremely challenging. Laboratories face numerous barriers and pitfalls when traveling the road from evaluation to going live.
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Eleven Cytokines Involved in Neurodegenerative Diseases
Neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by the progressive loss of structure or function of neurons, including the death of neurons. The most commonly studied neurodegenerative diseases are Multiple sclerosis (MS), Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), and Parkinson’s disease (PD). Cytokines are small proteins involved in inter-cellular signalling pathways. Numerous cytokine responses have been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases. In numerous
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Take Control of Your Health
In a recent interview for the USA Today supplement “Personalized Health,” Dr. Eric Topol spoke about the exciting future of decoding genetic information for precision, individualized medicine. With genotyping, patients are more empowered than ever to take control of their health. The results provide doctors with important information regarding how a drug functions inside an
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National Marrow Donor Program – Be The Match
We are proud to announce that this year, Luminex once again partnered with the National Marrow Donor Program – Be The Match® for the 18th Annual Marrow Ambassadors Golf Tournament. The goal of the event was to raise awareness of the need for additional bone marrow donors to help save lives. Each year, 10,000 patients
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