Black Hole Quencher Technical Brochure Now Available

TAMRA & DABCYL QUENCHERS SOON REPLACED BY BLACK HOLE QUENCHERS™!

NOVATO, CA (March 21, 2001) - A technical brochure describing an exciting new class of high-efficiency dark quenchers, the Black Hole Quencher dyes from Biosearch Technologies, is now available. The BHQ dyes were conceived and designed to overcome the fundamental limitations of TAMRA and DABCYL and replace them as fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) quenchers. TAMRA's inherent fluorescence leads to increased background and DABCYL's absorbance maximum does not overlap with many fluorophore emission maxima. Fluorescence-quenched probes incorporating a BHQ quencher dye in place of TAMRA or DABCYL can significantly boost signal-to-noise thereby increasing overall assay sensitivity. Importantly, the BHQ dyes simplify the design, implementation and interpretation of multiplexed assays utilizing three or more distinct fluorophores in one reaction tube. And, the BHQ dyes efficiently quench fluorophores over the entire visible spectrum and into the near IR. This permits the selection of spectrally well-resolved and efficiently quenched fluorophores thus minimizing fluorophore cross talk. The BHQ dyes are direct replacements for TAMRA and DABCYL and can be used in any application requiring fluorescence quenching.

Biosearch Technologies is a leading supplier of proprietary reagents, synthesis supports and specialty chemicals for genomics and proteomics R&D. BTI is an innovator in the design and synthesis of advanced reporter dye/quencher systems, high-throughput oligonucleotides for microarrays and custom synthesis of multi-labeled fluorogenic probes for real-time Q-PCR.

Biosearch Technologies, Inc., 81 Digital Drive, Novato, CA 94949-5750. Tel: 415-883-8400; Fax: 415-883-8488.