The UK life sciences distribution company Alpha Biotech has announced the signing of an agreement with Picodrop to become the sole UK distributor of Picodrop products in the UK and Ireland. The deal, which came into effect from 1 October 2010, confirms Alpha Biotech’s desire to be at the forefront of life science instrumentation with an expanding catalogue to present to its customers.

Picodrop produces a µl spectrophotometer that takes measurements through the specially designed tip, allowing retrieval of the sample post measurement. The new Picodrop V4 builds on the existing Picodrop design by improving both the user robustness and measurement sensitivity.

Digital filtering

Using state-of-the-art mathematical background reduction techniques developed in Cambridge, UK, the V4 Picodrop reduces the apparent tip absorption by over 75% resulting in virtual tip transparency. This results in a five-fold increase in measurement sensitivity allowing reliable, reproducible measurements down to less than 5ng/µl DNA.

Diagnostic monitoring

The V4 picodrop now monitors light flow through the system and informs the user when maintenance or cleaning is required.

High-speed connection

The inbuilt PC Ethernet connection allows over ten times more data to be sent between the Picodrop and PC, which means we can now take over three times more measurements per second, resulting in increased averaging accuracy.