I can't answer all of your questions, but I can at least tell you my
experience with the Wyatt instrument. I purchased the miniDawn about five
months ago and I've been very pleased with it. The company provides very
good technical support and training (a three day training course is provided
with the purchase of an instrument). The software provided with the
instrument is one of the most powerful, most useful, most user-friendly
software packages I've seen. Having four different HPLCs in my lab with
four different software packages, I can say the Wyatt software is a joy to
work with by comparison. The instrument works well for both batch
measurements or online measurements, such as a detector following a
size-exclusion column on an HPLC. With an RI detector, you can get a mass
value for all the peaks eluting from your column along with a rms radius.
The software also gives you the second virial coefficient, the mass
recovery, and polydispersity. It also calculates the number, weight, and
z-average values for the mass and the radius.
I would encourage you to speak to the people at Wyatt. I've found them to
be very honest and upfront about what their detectors can do and what they
can't. If there are advantages to dynamic scattering that would be useful
for your work, or if a 90o angle instrument would be sufficient, they would
probably tell you so. They could also put you in contact with a large
number of other light scattering users.
Scott Leigh, PhD
Cohesion Technologies
2500 Faber Place
Palo Alto, CA 94303
Phone: (650) 320-5581
Fax: (650) 320-5511
email: sleigh@cson.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: VERNON SHOUP [SMTP:vernon.shoup@regpha.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 1999 1:37 AM
> To: Recipients of ABRF List
> Cc: VERNON SHOUP
> Subject: Light scattering detectors
> Importance: Low
>
>
>
> We are considering buying an economical light scattering detector for
> HPLC, for characterizing protein multimers/aggregates and PEGylated
> proteins.
> Wyatt's low-end instrument is the triple-angle (45, 90, 135 degrees)
> MiniDawn. Precision Detectors' low-end instrument is the single-angle (90
> degrees) PD2010. More advanced instruments use more angles and/or QELS.
>
> I'd appreciate some feedback from light-scattering detector users. In
> particular, for my purposes, does one need multiple-angle detection, or is
> just a scattering angle of 90 degrees sufficient? How important is
> temperature control? How easy to use are the various manufacturers'
> software packages?
>
> Finally, can someone tell me what QELS (Dynamic Scattering) is?
>
> Vernon
>
> Vernon A. Shoup
> Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, QC Dept.
> Rensselaer, NY 12144
>
> vernon.shoup@regpha.com