LSC counter a hit with cell biologists
15 June 2010
Staff at the University of Newcastle’'s Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology are finding their new Hidex 300SL bench-top liquid scintillation counter from LabLogic Systems easy to use - even for beginners.
Currently used for counting 14C isotopes (with planned work for tritium and 32P in future), the 300SL was chosen because of its compact new design and price advantage compared with other, less well-featured alternatives.
"Now that we have the instrument up and running, we are impressed by how logical and simple it is to use," says the Centre’s Dr Richard Daniel. "The modern design has saved us lots of bench space, and it is very easy to load and unload samples."
"LabLogic got us off to a good start by explaining the system thoroughly. They also set up our main protocols and showed us how transferring the results to Excel is just one click away."
"We'’re finding that even beginners can use the instrument confidently because of the ease of the MikroWin instrument control software.”"
The 300SL is the first bench-top LSC counter to take advantage of TDCR (Triple to Double Coincidence Ratio) technology, which means that labs do not need a gamma source to calculate counting efficiency when working with pure beta emitters.
It takes 20 ml and 7 ml mini scintillation vials, and can count up to four radioisotopes simultaneously for multiple labelling experiments. As Newcastle has discovered, it is also exceptionally compact (50 cm wide x 60 cm deep x 65 cm high).