Bio-Rad Trans-Blot® Turbo™ Transfer System - Manual (Page 16)

Section 2: Equipment and Reagents Overview
The Trans-Blot® Turbo™ instrument and reagents are designed to provide fast, efficient, and
reproducible western blots of protein gels in as little as 3 minutes. Each convenient transfer pack
contains the necessary materials to efficiently transfer a single mini gel (7.0 x 8.5 cm) or one midi or two
mini gels (13.5 x 8.5 cm). The transfer packs contain two buffer-soaked ion reservoir stacks along with
either a prewetted nitrocellulose or PVDF membrane. The membranes do not require any pretreatment
before use.
The reagents and consumables available in the transfer packs are also available in a ready-to-assemble
format as part of the Trans-Blot Turbo RTA transfer kits. These kits provide the same optimized buffers
and consumables as the transfer packs, but require wetting of the membranes and filters before use.
Note: Traditional semi-dry western blotting consumables can also be used with the system. See
Section 3.7, page 15 for details.
For transfer, a gel is sandwiched between two ion reservoir stacks in the cassette. Each cassette can
hold 1 or 2 mini format gels (7.0 x 8.5 cm) or one midi format gel (13.5 x 8.5 cm). One or both cassettes
can be used for a blotting run. If both cassettes are run, they must use the same protocol and have the
appropriate combinations of gels, as shown in Table 1.
The cassettes can be run individually or simultaneously with independent start times using the
same protocol. This allows the user to perform multiple sequential runs without interruption, except
for reloading a cassette. At the end of each cassette run, the ion reservoir stacks are discarded.
Membranes and gel (if needed) can be used immediately for downstream applications or stored for later
use.
Fig. 3. Cassette base and lid. Reversible lid is labeled with lock,
unlock, and safety hazard symbols.
Fig. 2. Trans-Blot Turbo instrument.
Cassette bay A
(upper)
Cassette bay B
(lower)
Navigation
buttons
LCD display
Alphanumeric
keypad
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Trans-Blot® Turbo™ Blotting System