The software magnifies, rotates, resizes, adjusts contrast and brightness of, and annotates gel images, which can then be printed using standard and thermal printers. All data in the images can be quickly and accurately quantified. The software can measure average and total quantities and determine relative and actual amounts of proteins. Gel imaging software is also capable of determining the presence or absence and up or down regulation of proteins, their molecular weights, isoelectric points, and other values.
Bio-Rad offers three different software packages for gel imaging and analysis. Refer to the table below to find out the suitability of each of these software packages for your specific application:
- Image Lab™ software — image acquisition and analysis software that runs the Gel Doc™ XR+, Gel Doc™ EZ and ChemiDoc™ XRS+ imaging systems. The software allows automatic configuration of these imaging systems with appropriate filters and illumination sources and allows manual or automated analysis of PAGE gels and western blots. Image Lab software automatically indentifies the image with the best signal-to-noise ratio and generates a report, and it provides sophisticated algorithms to determine the number of lanes and bands in the image. It can quantitate and compare signal intensities to determine relative signal and generate other data such as relative front values for molecular weight determinations.
- Quantity One® 1-D analysis software — acquires, quantitates, and analyzes a variety of data from radioactive, chemiluminescent, fluorescent, and color-stained samples acquired from densitometers, storage phosphor imagers, fluorescence imagers, and gel documentation systems. The software allows automatic configuration of these imaging systems with appropriate filters, lasers, LEDs, and other illumination sources, and it allows manual or automated analysis of PAGE gels and western blots.
- PDQuest™ 2-D analysis software — used for 2-D gel electrophoretic analysis. The software is a popular tool for digitized gel image analysis, which includes spot detection and quantitation, gel comparison, and statistical analysis. PDQuest software seamlessly integrates with any of Bio-Rad's image acquisition instruments, and can also control the EXQuest™ spot cutter. Its advanced annotation feature can be used to label spots with text, URL links, document links, or mass spectrometry data.
Imaging Software Application Guide
| Gel Analysis |
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Image Lab |
Quantity One |
PDQuest |
| Image acquisition |
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| Automated analysis |
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| Automated imaging and analysis |
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| 1-D gel analysis |
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| Colony counting |
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• |
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| Dot/slot blot analysis |
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| 2-D gel analysis |
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| Image stacking* |
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• |
| Integrated gel excision (spot cutting) |
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| Integrated relational database |
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| 1-D gel cluster analysis and dendrogram tools |
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| Phenotype analysis |
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| Fatty acid profile analysis |
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| Enzyme activity panel analysis |
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| DNA and protein sequence data analysis |
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| Microarray and gene chip data analysis |
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| Data integration |
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| U.S. FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliance tools |
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*Image stacking is available in PDQuest Advanced software only.
