I have been a long-time fan of the Alexa dyes from Molecular Probes. Lately, however, the quality seems to have gone downhill fast. My last batch of Alexa 488 is hardly usable for labeling.

Anyway, I was looking for solutions and stumbled across some new dyes from Pierce. They don't show much data for the dyes, but I tried their 488 analog (Dylight 488) and it worked beautifully - I got great pictures! A side benefit is that the Dylight 488 doesn't seem to photobleach all. I'm going to try the other dyes as well as my Alexas run out.

http://www.piercenet.com/Products/Browse.cfm?fldID=9AA97866-4822-4AFE-B36D-49F7E1D7D653

Has anyone else tried these dyes? Why are they keeping them a secret?

I haven't tried the Pierce dyes.

However, your post makes me wonder if the acquisition of Molecular Probes by Invitrogen is having some bad effects. We've had a couple of really bad delays in antibody delivery (Caltag products, now also owned by Invitrogen). The Invitrogen rep was upfront that they were have some issues because of consolidation. Delayed products is bad enough, but quality is down then my initial enthusiasm for the merger is going to wane quickly.

Any other others with QC issues from these companies?

Same here,
Althogh I like mollecular probes lately I got some problem with their Amplex Red.
Never worked with Pierce dyes just with olecular probes alexa dyes which were always great. But I didnt use them since Invitrogen became the boss.
Guy

I was also having problems recently with Alexa 488. When I did a search on this it pointed me here. I never heard of Dylight, but now I'll give it a try. Does it come with labeling kits like the Alexa fluor?

Yes, they have Dylight labeling kits just like Alexa fluor:

http://www.piercenet.com/Products/Browse.cfm?fldID=294EFD98-4461-4352-A046-50B522F52952&WT.mc_id=forum

Yes, they do have labeling kits for Dylight, and they work better than Invitrogen's kits for Alexa fluor labeling. Dylight kits give faster labeling and better recovery of the labeled protein.

I just got an email from Rockland and they now sell the Dylight fluors as well, so I'm not the only one; it looks like they are catching on.

I also see that Pierce has added more new dyes (Dylight 405 and 633). So far I have used just the 488 and the 649 dyes and they are both working great. I'll post again after I have tried more dyes.

Thanks a-wondering-1 for posting, I'll be interested to read about your experiences with these kits.