Bio-Rad EXQuest Spot Cutter - Manual (Page 13)

1.2.11 Software
The EXQuest spot cutter is controlled through Bio-Rad Discovery Series ™ software PDQuest (7.4.0 or
greater) and Quantity One (4.6 or greater). PDQuest ™ Basic and Quantity One ® Basic software are shipped
with the spot cutter and may be activated to the fully featured software by purchase of a separate license
agreement.
PDQuest Basic and Quantity One Basic Software
PDQuest Basic and Quantity One Basic software control the EXQuest spot cutter through the Manual
Excision Tool. Both software packages include the following functionalities: Imaging editing tools including
image acquisition, Transform, Crop, Flip, Rotate, Text Tool, and file handling tools such as Print, Export to
TIFF, and Save. PDQuest Basic and Quantity One Basic, however, do not include any image analysis
capability. The Manual Excision Tool is accessed through the Identify drop-down menu in PDQuest or the
Excision drop-down menu in Quantity One. For more details see Section 5, Gel and Blot Excision.
• Spot Cutter Calibration Wizard: The Spot Cutter Calibration Wizard is used to calibrate the spot
cutter. This wizard is accessed through the Edit/Preferences drop-down menu in PDQuest and
Quantity One. For more detail see Section 3: Spot Cutter Calibration Wizard.
• Manual Excision Tool: The Manual Excision Tool provides the functionality required to:
– Image gels or blots with UV EPI or white Trans lighting
– Create a cut list
– Cut gels and blots
– Deliver protein spots to microplates for downstream automated processing and analysis
– Import cut lists from any 2-D software package where x, y coordinates can be exported.
PDQuest Software
The full-featured PDQuest software provides additional capabilities that include image analysis, automated
spot picking, database storage of raw 2-D electrophoresis gel data and the ability to acquire gel and blot
images using any of several Bio-Rad imaging systems. These scanned gels can be cropped, rotated etc.
with the image editing controls. With Automated Spot Detection and Matching, you can select the gels you
want to analyze, detect spots of interest, and create match sets and an analysis sets. The Analysis Set
Excision Tool is used to determine which gel(s) in an analysis set are best to cut from, and then to cut the
gels. The Analysis Set Excision Tool is used to cut one large gel or up to four small gels/blots without the
need to swap gels during the cut run. See Section 6, Analysis Set Excision Tool, for more details.
Quantity One Software
The full-featured Quantity One software provides additional capabilities that include: image analysis and
lane/volume (band) excision. In addition, Quantity One can acquire gel images using any of several Bio-Rad
imaging systems. These scanned gels/blots can be cropped, rotated etc. using the image editing controls.
See Section 7, Lane/Volume Excision Tool, for more details.
1.2.12 Optional Barcode Reader
The barcode reader, when purchased, can be used to record microplate or gel barcodes with the cut run
data. Its use is optional, but is recommended when working with large numbers of microplates to avoid
mixing plates up. See Sections 8.9 and 8.10 for use with the PDQuest or Quantity One software. The
barcode reader can be plugged into any one of the USB ports on the spot cutter (see Section 2.6) or
computer. For more information see the instructions shipped with the barcode reader.
INTRODUCTION
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