We have tested whole human and bovine blood, saliva, sputum, urine, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), cow milk, stool sample, and plant lysate; other types of samples can be used but we would recommend testing different concentrations to determine the concentrations that can be tolerated. We also recommend you try out our specimen-specific qPCR/RT-qPCR master mixes specially designed for each specimen type, such as blood, saliva/sputum, urine, stool, or plant.

The Inhibitor-Tolerant RT-qPCR mixes have been optimized for magnesium, dNTPs, stabilizers, and enhancers, resulting in highly reproducible, accurate RNA and DNA target amplification under fast thermal cycling conditions, delivering excellent results in qPCR multiplex assays, even in the presence of difficult PCR inhibitors. So we do not recommend adding any additional material, only the primers, probe(s), and sample.

When multiplexing, standard conditions can be used, however, if necessary, the reverse transcription reaction time can be extended up to 20 minutes and/or the temperature can be increased up to 55° C and the annealing/extension time can be extended up to 60 seconds and/or the temperature can be increased up to 65° C, but this will need to be tested during optimization.

We use our own proprietary Taq polymerase and a highly optimized buffer system to overcome inhibition.

These mixes contain glycerol and so cannot be dried down; see our specimen-specific range of inhibitor-tolerant quantitative PCR mixes for lyophilized or air-dried.

We would recommend using a range of crude sample concentrations or extract volumes to ascertain at what point unacceptable PCR inhibition starts to take place. This will vary as some sample types, such as blood and stool specimens typically contain more inhibitors for qPCR/RT-qPCR reactions.