Empirical Bioscience announced today that it has introduced FlashTaq Hot-Start Taq DNA Polymerase

Empirical Bioscience, (formerly known as Syzygy Biotech^™), a company that produces high-grade PCR reagents and enzymes, announced today that it has introduced FlashTaq Hot-Start Taq DNA Polymerase, a chemically-modified Taq polymerase designed to reduce non-specific amplification in PCR. The enzyme offers, fewer contamination issues and fast activation time.

In fact, under standard hot start conditions it can be activated and the enzyme recovers both 5’-3’ polymerase and 5’-exonuclease activities within two minutes versus the ten minutes of activation time required by many competitors’ enzymes.

“Unlike traditional non-hot start Taq which can become active at room temperature and begin to amplify non-specifically and form primer-dimers, FlashTaq will not become active until the temperature and time threshold has been reached, thus reducing the likelihood of non-specific amplification and primer-dimer formation,” said Pushpaja Dodla, Molecular Biologist, Empirical Bioscience.

In addition to its stability and rapid activation time, there are other factors that help FlashTaq streamline researchers’ studies, including the type of modifying reagent that it uses. The enzyme in FlashTaq has a reduced risk of contamination because it has been chemically-modified versus antibody-modified. Enzymes that are antibody-modified are highly susceptible to contamination from the organism in which they are produced.

This, and many other properties of FlashTaq lend themselves well to PCR in academic and research settings where primer-dimers and contamination are identified problems. As one Empirical Biosciencecustomer noted, “FlashTaq was able to obtain the PCR product at similar dNTP and Mg concentrations as with other hot start pols. Importantly, FlashTaq provided a much cleaner band (with no other higher or lower sized PCR products) when identical volumes of the product were loaded (10ul/lane) making it much easier for downstream gel extraction to obtain pure inserts for cloning.”

Another customer noted the lower cost of FlashTaq. “Since all the polymerases we tried worked, Empirical is competitively lower in pricing and I would indeed love to be able to buy a cheaper alternative to the current hot start polymerase we use.”

Data shows that 70% of those who try Empirical’s products buy them. The company has a 95+% customer retention rate.

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