Reverse Transcriptase Market - Opinions & Insights

Each member of The Science Advisory Board who participated in this study was invited to comment on the following question:

"What do you like and/or dislike about the reverse transcriptase kits currently on the market and what features should suppliers include to improve them?"

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The responses, which have been edited for grammar and clarity, appear below along with each respondent's first name, job position, and geographic region.

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Robert, Professor/Teacher, North America

Matthew, Staff Scientist

Accessory reagents such as oligo-dT often need supplemental purchases. Shipping can be expensive.
Charles, Post Doctoral Fellow

Better efficiency is needed for some applications. Fortunately I don't need it right now.
Johanna, Post Doctoral Fellow

Better temperature stability.
Kimberly, Graduate Student/Research Assistant

Cheaper price and long shelf life.
Yiumo, Principal Investigator

Competition has done little to greatly decrease price while conserving quality.
Jason, Graduate Student/Research Assistant

Consistency and fidelity.
Amrisha, Post Doctoral Fellow

Convenience and reliability.
Rhona, Laboratory Technician

Convenience is a major factor for the kits. Better optimization and less variation would be helpful.
Larry, Principal Investigator

Convenience and improved consistency.
David, Principal Investigator

Cost is usually a concern. That's why we favor Clontech's PowerScript since we get favorable unit pricing. So it is imperative for the market participants to appropriately price their offering, and pack size (i.e. units/sales unit).
Enal, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

Detailed user information for new researchers.
Baby, Principal Investigator

Dislike not enough availability.
Ronald, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

Don't usually use kits.
Gail, Principal Investigator

Ease of assembly of the reaction is crucial since we have students who have trouble assembling too many components.
Ralph, Principal Investigator

Ease of use.
Austin, Principal Investigator

Easy to use, reliable.
Towia, Principal Investigator

Enzymes are best used if they are sold previously aliquoted in sizes that are most commonly used, such that the cocktail/supermix can be prepared in the enzyme vial. Also adding a inert dye in the enzyme that will indicate addition of the enzyme will also be useful.
Malathi, Post Doctoral Fellow

Every company markets their kits as new and different and much superior to everyone else's kits. I am suspicious that RT is much like agarose. There are only three kinds and everyone repackages it. I haven't seen that much difference between RT kits from the several suppliers I have used to be real convinced that the technologies each touts are really that ground breaking. As far as features I would like to see more of, working in a lab with rotation students, the easier the kit is to use the better. I like the fact that some of the kits come as a supermix, so there is a much smaller chance some medical student will forget to add something vital. And, of course, the price point is always something I examine quite closely.
Beverly, Staff Scientist

For some applications, the 1-step kits are great but then you get used to using them and for some applications, they are horrible. In the past, I have rarely used separate RT system (prior to PCR) but recently was having trouble amplifying a large cDNA (even in small pieces) and tried Invitrogen Superscript III RT system -it worked great! From now on, I imagine I will try 1-step system first but switch to Invitrogen Superscript III at any sign of difficulty.
Teresa, Principal Investigator

High fidelity and reaction temperature.
Wayland, Staff Scientist

I am OK with these.
Igor, Principal Investigator

I am quite satisfied with the current kits.
Jacques, Principal Investigator

I appreciate the fact that this enzyme is available since my research wouldn't be possible without it. However, I would hope that something could be done to improve the fidelity of these enzymes.
Todd, Staff Scientist

I appreciate the level of detail supplied with the Promega kits, especially their Access RT-PCR system. Although I routinely perform RT-PCR, it is nice to have such detailed description for training student researchers not familiar with PCR.
Ami, Laboratory Technician

I found Invitrogen's RT to be superior to other suppliers I have tried. As always, costs could be reduced.
Michael, Graduate Student/Research Assistant

I have had problems in the past getting the large size of Invitrogen AMV-RT because it did not pass their QC and had to be remade. I ended up ordering the same total amount of the same enzyme in the smaller size (different lot numbers) for the same price but wasted several weeks of backorder time. I came very close to switching to another supplier. If I have the same problem again, I will. I do like the ease of use of the Invitrogen kit and in all other respects, it works well for us.
Donna, Post Doctoral Fellow

I have started working with Sigma-Aldrich since last summer. Ever since I've been using Sigma's products with no problem. I am very satisfied. I have used products that I didn't even know before that Sigma was making them.
Hamideh, Staff Scientist

I like all necessary buffers to be included and ideally compatible with down stream reactions.
James, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

I like master mix and ABI offers it. I used to use Invitrogen, but ahs too many steps. Ideal will be to use one step and let the reaction go.
Raj, Staff Scientist

I like precise protocol kit manuals that explain the components in detail.
Terra, Staff Scientist

I like Superscript First-strand Kit, It is convenience and worked well.
Yifu, Post Doctoral Fellow

I like the one-step RT-PCR kits but I wish suppliers would revise reaction sizes so one could get more reactions from a vial. We already have cut the reaction size in half to save expenses.
Howard, Principal Investigator

I like the Reverse transcriptases that have RNaseH- modifications because they give me longer first strand synthesis products.
Phillip, Principal Investigator

I like the versatility of using a first strand synthesis kit without having to use the whole reaction in the PCR step.
Ann, Staff Scientist

I prefer one tube methods if they work consistently. If they don't work consistently I'd use a two tube system that did work consistently. I usually am not satisfied with the length of my cDNAs even with some of the kits that purport to providing "full length clones". I have also had trouble with RT reactions on very 5 prime products.
Matthew, Principal Investigator

I think most RT are the same, and we look for price first, ease of getting it (i.e. at our University stock room) second, and then if it works ok, we buy it repeatedly. I do not think I would try an RT from a 'fly-by-night' vendor or one with little name recognition, but I feel safe doing it this way from trusted suppliers such as Promega, Stratagene, Roche, etc...
Deborah, Principal Investigator

I think the kits on the market a very good. I use the ones that supply their own buffer. I do not like it when suppliers do not provide buffer.
John, Principal Investigator

I use this reverse transcriptase (Superscript III) because I have been able to reverse transcribe messages that are 12,000 bp in length. I have not achieve this result with any of the other reverse transcriptases that I have tried.
Stephen, Graduate Student/Research Assistant

I would prefer to have individual components rather than master mixes; it would allow me to customize the kit to my specific needs.
Crystal, Post Doctoral Fellow

If I could get sample kits with a gift certificate for additional kits if all works well, to try new sources I would be more likely to try new kits/companies.
Christopher, Principal Investigator

I'm fairly happy with the new generation Superscript III product.
Andy, Staff Scientist

I'm not sure that Probetec uses reverse transcriptase but it is a neatly packaged kit and very easy to use for my CLS's at the bench. I wish someone would develop PCR for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other important pathogens that could be used like the Probetec kits .. so easy! My laboratory would be doing many more PCR tests if the kits were available.
Kathi, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

In general I think that biomol enzymes are expensive and that prices could be lower.
Georgina, Principal Investigator

Include reliable DNAse in the kit.
Shailendra, Post Doctoral Fellow

Include RNase H in the kit.
Seung-Hyo, Post Doctoral Fellow

Invitrogen kit includes DTT and buffers. It would be nice if kits also included dNTPs.
Wendy, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

Invitrogen provides a kit-based system including oligo-dT and random primers, which is great.
Jonathan, Laboratory Technician

Invitrogen Superscript always work in our hands. I will change when we lose our trust for this supplier or there is a significant improvement made by another supplier.
Juan, Principal Investigator

It is a bit difficult to modify away from the "kit" formation.
Haeri, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

It is always nice when suppliers include the appropriate buffers with their enzymes.
Patricia, Principal Investigator

It is common for PCR to follow reverse transcriptase, and yet there are very few one-step RT-PCR kits which allow a single prep to generate a DNA product. The few that are available do not seem to be developed to the point of perfection. It would be my recommendation to put more emphasis on these one-step RT-PCR kits, as they would ultimately same a researcher time, money, and overall effort.
Vincent, Staff Scientist

It is fine, should improve the flexible to end users.
Jiang-Zhou, Staff Scientist

It would be great if there was DNase included in the kits with proper directions for using it. Also, most of the kits have many independent components, it will be good to have some of the components pooled together to have a "more ready-to-use" buffer. Of course, they can keep supplying individual components as well for some specific usage.
Alfica, Post Doctoral Fellow

Kits are sometimes ambiguous about their specific contents; claims are frequently inflated and represent "best case" scenarios rather than truly accurate information about their utility/ease of use/yields.
Tim, Principal Investigator

Kits that contain protocols with them, and ALL reagents - not ones that you have to provide your own DEPC-treated reagent X, or whatever.
Michelle, Laboratory Technician

Less lot to lot variability.
Veronica, Graduate Student/Research Assistant

Like kits as they are convenient... Dislike - expensive.
Wayne, Principal Investigator

Like: quality, convenience, pricing. Dislike: Lack of supplier technical support.
Anthony, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

Like--simple laminated protocols, easy to use format (Taq, 10X buffer, dNTPs in color coded or well marked vials) Dislike--some kit components can be depleted before others.
Naser, Post Doctoral Fellow

Longer storage life would be great.
Richard, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

Make them easier to use, i.e. one vial for everything.
Hyung, Post Doctoral Fellow

More units per tube and the more units, the tube or RT should be cheaper.
Nova, Graduate Student/Research Assistant

Most of the kits limit the amount of RNA and they specify total say for example for 5 ug etc. I would be happy if they design kits so that the results do not vary with quantity , and we can scale it up instead of using small amounts many times.
Subramanian, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

Not stable expensive.
Yi-Hong, Post Doctoral Fellow

Our group is satisfied with the current reverse transcriptase kits on the market. I would be helpful to sell buffers and parts of the kits separately. Many thanks,
Trina, Staff Scientist

Overall, these kits are way too expensive for the smaller labs. While they have all the bells and whistles, you end up paying more in the long run.
James, Professor/Teacher

Pack size is too small, and enzyme is too concentrated. I prefer approx 1 ul per reaction.
Laurie, Staff Scientist

Price.
Kris, Principal Investigator

Price is disproportionate to cost of production and QC of recombinant enzymes. We are getting gouged. Many are of dubious quality and stability as well.
Bruce, Principal Investigator

Provide smaller kits. Much of the reagents are not utilized, making the cost per sample very high.
John, Principal Investigator

Quite expensive. Most are pretty good but they haven't come up with a significantly improvised enzyme yet and the technology isn't advancing very rapidly in this field.
Raghu, Staff Scientist

Reverse transcriptases are typically used as a part of a long protocol, such as the protocol for gene expression microarray analysis (this is what we do). Therefore the recommendation of the supplier of the main reagent/tool (the microarrays in our case) is the critical factor!
Dimitri, Principal Investigator

RT kits are so easy to use and gives consistent results.
Ganesh, Post Doctoral Fellow

Simplicity can not be overstated! Ambion is simply effective!
Anne, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

Smaller unit quantities. That way one can buy the amount and units needed for multiple experiments without having to worry about it's quality from use to use, when a large amount is bought.
Ryan, Laboratory Technician

Some work well on some reactions and others don't. It would be better for us to get very small trial packs from several suppliers.
Virginia, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

Specificity.
Anil, Staff Scientist

Suppliers should be geared to make the use of their products as straightforward as possible. Also, pricing is VERY important.
Timothy, Principal Investigator

The amplification kits for array probes make way to much product. If they just made the amount of product you need for an experiment, I imagine the per reaction cost would be more reasonable.
Maitreya, Principal Investigator

The control reactions are an essential part of each kit in order to ensure working reaction conditions.
Rick, Post Doctoral Fellow

The difference between AMV-RTase and MMLV-RTase, or lack thereof, is not clearly explained in the catalogues. Sure, scientists should know these things without being told, but still, it would be helpful.
Jiro, Graduate Student/Research Assistant

The kit is easy to use and particularly there are no dislikes.
Rakesh, Staff Scientist

The kits I have had a chance to use, (i.e. Invitrogen and Roche), are fine. I tried Roche because I was offered a free sample. Lack of funds is keeping me from switching, but I will probably do so as soon as an opportunity arise. Including new samples of new versions of an enzyme to allow comparison would definitely be an incentive to try new stuff Knowledgeable tech support, not just someone reading the web site information would also be a plus.
Claire, Staff Scientist

The last time I tried RTs from several suppliers, Invitrogen's Superscript was the only RT that could process more than a couple hundred bases. We need to copy at least a couple thousand bases. To my knowledge, Superscript is the only RT that can do that reliably.
Margaret, Principal Investigator

The price.
Brian, Principal Investigator

The problem with the kits is the shelf life. We will run a lot of reactions at once and then take a week or month off before getting to the next lot and sometimes we have had kits go bad in this time.
Alex, Staff Scientist

The reason I switched to Qiagen is because there are less steps at which reagents are added and the protocol is very quick. Other companies should streamline their RT kits to make them quicker with less steps.
Lisa, Staff Scientist

There is nothing I do not like now.
Yengkong, Laboratory Technician

Thermostable ones are expensive. AMV RTase should be cheaper. I like the "kit" configurations because the reaction results are more uniform. Processivity and proof reading abilities of the RTases should be improved. Manufacturers should include options for "kits" for coupled transcription and translation and also improve the RTases to be able to use modified nucleotides.
Demir, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

Thermostability is very important in the research we perform in our lab. For real time applications, that has several expensive components, it is important to get the best 'bang for the buck' along with reliability. With reliable suppliers like Invitrogen, I have run several successful experiments and that helps in striking out variables in case of failures.
Nanjundiah, Graduate Student/Research Assistant

They all appear to be very similar, non really stand out.
Edward, Principal Investigator

They are expensive and often time proprietary.
Mark, Principal Investigator

They are stable, easy to use, and readily available.
Alison, Post Doctoral Fellow

They should include samples of related products from the supplier.
Megan, Graduate Student/Research Assistant

Too expensive, it is much cheaper to synthesize your own oligos and purchase RT separately.
Brigitte, Post Doctoral Fellow

Too expensive.
Frank, Graduate Student/Research Assistant

Too many steps to set up a RT reaction.
Therese, Post Doctoral Fellow

Traits of RT of most importance to me is its fidelity and processivity as I often use RT for cDNA work of specific gene(s). All others are minor. Just like in playing stocks, the fundamentals such as sectors in economical cycles, company management integrity and skills, company business stage, are important, all others, such stock house anal-yeasts' rec., financial houses' reports, etc., are just noise.
Zhanpeng, Post Doctoral Fellow

We are using big amounts of RT for our experiments. it is recombinant house RT.
Alexander, Post Doctoral Fellow

We can always have better processivity and fidelity.
Michael, Lab Director/Supervisor/Coordinator

We use what the core facility recommends and have no direct knowledge of pricing.
Ray, Principal Investigator

What I don't like from some kits is that reagents usually are supplied in amounts that are not consistent. For instance one of the reagents ran out before the other components. And if you need more of that reagent you have to buy the whole kit. This makes almost impossible to maintain a regular purchase schedule, specially for researchers from other countries (i.e. from South America) for whom the prices are usually too high. Instead what I like is that some Companies offer special discount on kits that are close to expiration date. My comments are mainly based in my almost 25 years of experience working in Argentina, with very restrictive funds, before coming to USA where I am working now.
Laura, Staff Scientist

Your choice of RT kit really depends on your experimental needs. If you are worried about specificity (say with gene-specific primers), then you want to use an RT kit with increased thermostability, if you want higher yield, you may want to go with an enzyme that produces more product, etc. I've learned that when you get product from a reaction at higher temperatures, it's because these enzymes are very processive; even less than a few minutes at functional enzyme temperature is enough time for product to be made. So you really don't have all that much flexibility in reaction temperature with RTs. if your needs aren't really that specific, I'd go with the cheapest enzyme. Sarah Post Doctoral Fellow

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