Starting August 1st 2007, INTAVIS introduces the next generation instrument for automated in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry on whole mounts, vibratome sections and thin sections on slides – the InsituPro VSi. We have improved our successful InsituPro VS to more closely match our customers’ needs and included a number of often requested features that make performing your experiments even more convenient. The InsituPro VSi replaces the InsituPro VS and with that represents the third generation in the INTAVIS InsituPro product line.
Like the InsituPro VS, the new instrument automatically performs the following steps of a typical manual in situ protocol:
- Rehydration of specimens or slides
- Permeation with proteinase K or detergents
- Postfixation
- Prehybridization
- Hybridization with individual probes or antibodies
- Posthybridization washes
- Blocking and antibody incubation
- All washing steps
As with all our InsituPro product line instruments, all samples can be treated with individual probes or antibodies. This allows the user to perform expression screens or other experiments using different probes. In addition, a single run can have a variety of parameters for individual steps (e.g. permeation), allowing specimens at different stages with different requirements to be processed in parallel.
The InsituPro VSi maintains the advanced liquid handling system, flexibility and versatility of the InsituPro VS. Additionally, the new instrument features a number of improvements, such as:
- Bottle preheating for posthybridization washes
- Direct software control of the thermoregulator for more flexibility in temperature setting
- Faster cooling and heating of the specimen racks, extended temperature range
- Heated lid for the specimen rack to avoid condensation and facilitate probe/antibody recovery
- Faster processing due to adjusted throughput (60 small/medium specimen or slides per run, 32 large specimen per run)
- Two ports for large buffer bottles for easier handling of bulk solutions like PBST or TBST
- Step motor robot, introducing more robust robotics technology
- Advanced operation software for facilitated programming with different parameters: automatic calculation of subzones
