Saturday, January 26, 2013

SprayQC -- take the guesswork out of nanospray!

I talk about this paper so often that  I was certain I had written about it.  SprayQC is an open source software program from Richard Scheltema and Matthias Mann that aims to provide easy computer monitored analysis of your nanospray.  It requires a bit of hardware, including a new camera and video card for your PC ($100?) and is absolutely worth your time.
 Picture this:  Middle of the night and your deep into fraction 7 of these tumor digests and your spray goes all wonky.  Normally, you get in the next morning and it ruins your day.  Sample lost forever.  But if you have SprayQC and your spray goes wonky?  The runs stop.  And by wonky, I mean that it is using a video to monitor your spray stability in real time, it also monitors your LC system for errors and it monitors you TIC baseline for weirdness.  If these occur, SprayQC stops after your run and then sends you an email describing why and how the run was stopped.  In my opinion, everyone should have this software installed on their PC. It was written with the EasyNano and the NanoFlex source in mind, but it is easily adaptable to other LCs and nanosources.
You can read more about this fantastic program here.

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