marketing win!
September 26th, 2008 by Ψ*ΨWe’ve all seen the video for the Bio-Rad PCR song, right? (I used to work with a Bio-Rad thermocycler, many labs ago. It was friendly and reliable. Writing on those tiny little tubes will give you hand cramps in a hurry, though…) And its successor, the epMotion (complete with boy band)? Go watch ‘em if you haven’t already.
Well, those drew a lot of attention. They were funny! Even the bio-challenged among us probably got a kick out of them. I have to say I like this strategy. The ads we see in C&EN and elsewhere are, honestly, pretty boring and definitely easy to skip over and not bother reading or remembering. These videos are hilarious, they’re very memorable, and they see pretty wide circulation. Honestly, some of us pass these on to our friends because they’re just too good to miss. We are THAT NERDY.
Now, Analtech has taken notice, and has come out with another awesome sciencey distraction for us![1] Watch and be amused. (Especially recommended for Monty Python fans.)
What they’re trying to sell us is a centrifugal chromatography system. The idea is that instead of a plate with spots eluting upwards–or a column with bands eluting downward–you have a silica rotor that elutes rings of separated goodness outwards. The gadget then collects fractions for you. It’s supposed to combine advantages of prep TLC (which I’ve never used) with flash chromatography, and they claim that separations are pretty quick and painless (20 minutes). With the availability of automated flash systems, though, I wonder how useful this system actually is (I’m too lazy to look at prices).[2] (Has anyone used one of these? Is it as awesome as they claim?)
It looks cool, and they did a commendable job with the video, but the number one toy on my want! list is still a DART…I’d love to be able to do TLC-MS.
[1] *snicker* Short A, guys? Really? You think people will go along with that?
[2] If ANY instrument company would be willing to ship one of their toys to my lab, I’d be more than happy to give it a test run and post a review. 
…Actually, that would be pretty awesome.
It is the same Chromatotrom that has being in the market for at least 10 years. Plants natural products’ people like to use them to separate non polar compounds….
The Chromatotron was first sold in 1978. Harrison Research retired after 30 years but the Chromatotron is still available from T-Squared Technology:
http://www.tsqtech.com
http://www.chromatotron.com
Its a Chromatotron. We have two of them collecting dust in our lab as we speak.
Would you be willing to give one up for our lab? Seems like there is a lot of hostility toward this idea of radial chromatography but I really want to try it myself, just don’t got the equipment!
I love the chromatotron. The one I used during my postdoc looked like it had seen some action during WWII, but it worked really well. It was also really easy to make your own plates with a custom stationary phase (polar, non-polar, chiral….).
I’ve used a chromatotron a couple of times in grad school and it worked pretty well for me: if you take an UV lamp and shine light on it you can actually see the various bands moving towards the edge of the plate, making it quite simple to isolate the single compounds. The only drawback is that you could separate only up to 200-300 mg of material (I don’t know if there are bigger or different models, though), so I guess for your 10 g of crude starting material flash is still the way to go.
Heh, our stuff often doesn’t require UV for visualization. That’s reserved for really early intermediates
I think the video mentioned separating out 4 g of material, but I’m not sure I remember correctly.
Different thickness rotors allow for more material to be separated.
I’ve never used one but was intrigued enough to read their literature after watching the video. Then I realized we have one sitting in our lab. It may get some use, if it is in operational shape.
“I have no idea what she’s talkin’ about.”
“Yeah, but she’s pretty hot.”
Classic! I was a little disappointed with the alchemist’s acting though.
Actually, I wrote the memo starting the ball rolling on producing a viral video for Analtech on 21 June 2007.
By fall we worked through revisions of a script in loose alliance with a State science education initiative for magnet schools and with the Delaware Bioscience Association to promote science for young people as a career path with a sense of humor.
We at Analtech were heartened to see the “PCR Song” by Bio-Rad launch in mid-January, because we felt that the timing and venue was right for our own project.
I still love watch the “PCR Song”.
To answer some questions raised:
The Cyclograph has an integral UV lamp.
We’re a planar chromatography company. Harrison Research, who produced the Chromatotron never offered precast rotors. That’s where we stepped in. We produce precast, prescraped rotors from 2 to 8 mm thicknesses for Harrison’s customers. Because Harrison couldn’t meet customer demand and finally retired, Analtech began marketing its own centripetal chromatography device.
We also offer blank glass rotors so labs can bake their own.
Thanks for sharing your enjoyment of the video and embedding it on your site. It was great fun to produce, done completely digitally with the RED camera.
By the way, the “I have no idea” fellow is the founder and president of Analtech, with nearly 50 years of thinlayer chromatography experience.
“Turkey Leg Guy”
JJB
[*Still not guaranteed to get you a promotion.]
Awesome! I was hoping to hear from someone at Analtech.
Great video, by the way
@Ans In the market for at least 10 years? The Chromatotron was invented in 1979 (US Patent no. 4139458) and has been been commercially available since at least 1985, perhaps earlier. My supervisor saw one at a conference and thought it was cool but was too cheap to shell out for it. So he got the engineering workshop in the department to make one.
We still use them all the time – but don’t buy the ready-made plates. It’s dead easy to make your own – just like big round prep TLC plates with a bit extra binder. Then you scrape them off to make sure they are flat and level and your good to go.
I’ve never used or seen one of these but I have read about chromatography being done on a circular plate. My ex-advisor bought us one of these though http://www.isco.com/products/products3.asp?PL=101101010
It’s just a regular automated flash chromatography set-up. Loading depends on column size. The columns are bought prepacked and can be stacked to make longer columns. UV detector figures out separation although it’s not always accurate but a simple TLC will be all you need to figure things out. Solvent gradient can be changed any time during the run.
And yes it does take about 30-40 min from sample prep to end of column run. I switched groups, but still have access to the instrument and I love it.
Haven’t gone back to regular hand-packed columns in a long while (read: about 4 years). I should do that soon before I graduate.
2 other groups in my department have it and love it too. Sorry I don’t mean to be fawning over the darned thing. It just saves you soooo much time and you could be starting another reaction while your column is running on the side. I could run columns all day and still do a lot of other stuff.
Although I’ve heard people say that it doesn’t do a good job with NLO chromophores…I guess I’ll find out soon.
If you become a professor some day, be kind to your grad student and buy them one of these.
Ψ*Ψ:
John has/had a Chromatatron around somewhere. He used it quite a bit back in the late 90s when the group was doing Bergman cyclizations. Later, he bastardized it somewhat to be a quick and dirty spin coater, but I don’t think he killed it.
I personally never used it, but my buddies did, and it was useful, if I remember correctly.
Addition: http://www.eppendorf.com/int/hawkpopup.php?contentid=13
Compare to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUod3jGQt0U start from 0:40 if you don’t feel like watching the whole video
(sorry about your disappearing comment–akismet must have thought you were selling v1@gr@)