Customer Stories

Following are actual stories submitted by Turner BioSystems customers. We are pleased to present these testimonials for your review. If you own a Turner BioSystems instrument and would like to submit your story, click here.

Modulus Microplate

We recently purchased a luminometer/fluorometer from Turner Biosystems. The machine performed excellent and was easy to use and setup. The sales team was extremly helpful in locating a specialized filter for one of our assays. Overall it was a great experience in the purchase of this piece of equipment.
Michael J. Duryee, University of Nebraska Medical Center

Modulus Single Tube

"I have been using the Turner Biosystem fluorometer to measure DNA amounts from my chromatin immunoprecipitation methods. This instrument is perfect for our applications. It has a very small footprint and works like a charm when hooked up to the computer. Life in the lab would be very different without the instrument."
Tae Hoon Kim, Yale University School of Medicine

20/20n Single Tube Luminometer

I purchased luminometer 20/20 in 2006 and since then I was using it to measure luminescence in transfected cells by dual luciferase assay kit. I have to say that my experience with that instrument is great. Readings are very precize and reliable. It is easy, simple and fast to work with that instrument. When I shared some of my readings with Promega team to discuss their assay kit they were extreamly impressed. They asked me "You use 20/20 luminometer to get those data, don't you?" I have readings in a scale of milions of counts and the fluctuations are in a scale of thousands. The instrument is so precise that standard deviation is practically close to zero. I have to say that the instrument model was not compatible to send data by USB port but that "problem" was easy fixed by contacting customer service of Turner Biosystems and by receiving an extention device that makes everything to work nice. I'd recommend that in future models you have those USB ports installed on the instrument. I'd like to say that it is pleasure to work with an instrument like 20/20 luminometer and that I am happy to have that machine in or lab. Thank you for your interest of my experience with luminometer 20/20. With best regards,
Dobromir Slavov Ph.D., CU-CVI, Aurora, Colorado

Veritas Microplate Luminometer

We have been happily using our Veritas machine to perform luciferase plate assays. We recently used this instrument to characterize a novel type of small RNA precursor called the "mirtron". Our results were just published in Cell.
Okamura K., J. W. Hagen, H. Duan, D. Tyler and E. C. Lai (2007). The mirtron pathway generates microRNA-like regulatory RNAs in Drosophila.
Cell 130: 89-100.
Eric Lai, Sloan-Kettering Institute

We are using the Turner luminometer to measure ATP levels in cariogenic microorganisms. This instrument has proved instrumental in helping us develop a chairside test for dental caries, and has inspired our team to think out of the box for the creation of a potential home test for detection of oral microflora that may precipitate an environment conducive for cavities. When used in conjuction with the Bactiter Glo bioluminescence kit, this system has performed reproducibly and flawlessly, and has an extended near 5 log linear range. Turner has created a fine instrument that is definitely one that we would like to continue using for a long time.
Curtis A. Machida, Oregon Health and Science University

During my graduate school career, while working out the effect of small molecules in modulation of important transcription factor- NF-kB, a protein which acts as a survival factor in cancer cells, I used Turner Biosystem's veritas luminometer instrument for chemiluminescence based reporter assays. The sensitivity of veritas is phenomenal! The data I got gave a very clear yes/no answer! I used it with conjunction to promega's dual reporter assay and it worked great. We were able to clearly establish the effect of the small molecules we generated on activation of NF-kB using veritas. The software is very userfriendly and the system itself is dynamic with several options which you may/may not incorporate depending on your experiment. Overall, i found the instrument perfect at a very good price!R results were published in Chemistry and Biology 2004 and Journal of the American Chemical Society 2006.
Vasudha Sharma, Texas A and M

TBS-380 Mini-Fluorometer

I have two Turner Biosystems TBS-380 fluorometers. The TBS-380 fluorometer is not only a handy and reliable fluorometer to have in the lab but it is playing a special role in our research. We have developed a rapid and sensitive fluorometric assay for free or loosely-bound (labile) zinc ions in biological fluids, using our fluorophore Zinquin [1]. Labile zinc is the first pool of zinc to be depleted in zinc deficiency and we expect that labile plasma zinc will be a more sensitive indicator of zinc status than total plasma zinc. To this end, we are involved in a collaborative study with Harvest Plus and the University of California (Davis) to investigate labile plasma zinc as a biomarker of human zinc deficiency in young children, including infants in Bangladesh who will be a part of a high zinc rice supplementation trial. The TBS-380 fluorometer is ideal for several reasons. It is portable (and therefore easily incorporated into field studies), it handles UV excitation which is essential for Zinquin, it gives a very stable fluorescence signal and it takes either standard cuvettes or mini-cuvettes (with adapter). We have found the mini-cuvettes to be ideal for those biological fluids in which volume is an issue or which contain very low concentrations (nM) of zinc. In addition to plasma, we have used the fluorometer and Zinquin with urine, induced sputum, saliva and cell culture media. One possibility is to develop a kit for labile Zn based around the TBS-380, Zinquin and the other required reagents. Other than measurements of zinc, we have found the TBS-380 to be very useful for measuring caspase activity in cell extracts using commercial fluorogenic caspase peptide substrates.

1. Zalewski PD, Truong-Tran AQ, Lincoln S, Ward D, Shankar A, Coyle P,
Jayaram L, Copley A, Grosser D, Murgia C, Lang C and Ruffin RE 2006.Use of
a Zinc Fluorophore to Measure labile Pools of Zinc in Body Fluids and
Cell-Conditioned Media. Biotechniques Volume 40, Number 4: pp 509-520
Dr Peter Zalewski, University of Adelaide