The low-profile PCR vessels is design to reduce the overhead space above the reaction solution inside the vessel.

During the thermal cycling, the water in the solution evaporate and fill up the overhead space, causing the concentration increase of the reacting solution.

The smaller overhead space, the fewer water evaporated, thus reduce the concentration change of the solution when heated. This will be helpful especially when you are doing low volume reaction.

In general, the low-profile PCR vessels are 5 mm shorter in height than the regular PCR vessels.

In order to maintain the pressure from the cycler lid to the vessels, please applied the compressor mat for the experiment and set the lid to heat to 120°C.

There are three different setting of temperature for the lid:

- The propose of lid heating is to avoid severe condensation in PCR tube during reaction.
- Evaporation is related to the pool sealing of the PCR vessels. However, the proper pressure from the lid to the sealed vessels will help to maintain the integrity of the seal, thus help to prevent evaporation.
- The Lid heating doesn’t do the cycling. No, the competitive units doesn’t do the cycling as well.
- While the block start to goes down under 30°C, the lid heating is stopped. The temperature of lid will gradually decrease. The competitive unit does it as well.

- Condensation inside the tube is mainly caused from the tube stayed at lower temperature (e.g., 4°C) after the run for a long period of time. It occurs to all the cycler. This phenomenon is similar with putting a bottle of water in refrigerator and you will see the condensation in the bottle.

- Evaporation means that the evpor of the contents in the tube is released to the envirament. It is definitely associate with the integrity of the vessel sealing.

- If the seal or the vessel cannot withstand the temperature cycling during the run, they may have serious deforming. It is so severe that the deforming tear off the seal. This is caused from the quality issue of plate and seal, because these consumables need to stay intact at cycler.

The lid of the cycler need to be heated to proper temperature first then the block start to heat.

According to the setting of the lid temperature, the room temperature and the usage of the compression mat, it can take 2-8 minutes for the lid the finish the heating.

For the power-failure-during-a-run situation, when the power come back to the unit, the unit will start from what it was running (without touch the power switch) and finish the protocol.

Also, if the power failure for long time, the unit will still start (after the power back on) as well but it will take few seconds or minute for lid module heat up.

After the lid module reach to the setting temperature, the protocol will be continued. This design will protect the PCR experiment.

This function named “Auto-restart after power outage”

Yes! But we would not recommend you do that really often.

Running your cycler overnight at 4°C potentially reduce the life cycle of the instrument. In most application, 16°C instead of 4°C for overnight storage can well-protect your DNA sample.

Yes! There are two options of the ramping rate for the TurboCycler, Hi and Low.

Hi for the full ramping power that will speed up your experiment and Lo for the 50% of the ramping power that can mimic the running condition on the other older generation cyclers.

There are three different setting of temperature for the lid:

120°C (for use with low-profile vessel + compression mat), with extra 3 min pre-heat
105°C
Heater off

There is only one block configuration for the TurboCycler so far, so it is not interchangeable.

However, if there is any service need to be done with the block, it can be easily disassembled and sent back to us for service.