White or Clear PCR plates?

[esl]

Hello,

I'm just wondering if you can advise me on choosing plates for real-time PCR. I've heard that white plates can give better sensitivity and improve the signal:noise ratio.

We have some previous data which came from white plates and showed a 20-fold difference between treatments, but new data from clear plates which shows no difference. Could the plate difference be the answer - we can't find any other explanation and the RNA came from the same tissue.

Thanks for your help!

[Aga]

According to the manufacturer of our real-time system (Roche - we have LightCycler 480 for plates analysis) white plates are better unless you have software version 1.5 and above. With newer software version you can use both types of plates and no changes should be observed.

So I don't know if it's the software issue but it could be so - it depends on the software how the fluorescence sample to background ratio is interpreted and so on. I guess it could also depend on the type of real-time system.

I use white plates if anyone asks