Cost of reagents

The cost of reagents should remain essentially constant if the laboratory keeps performing the same type of work. Unavoidable glassware breakage should not change too much from year to year. Prices of all these items have risen substantially over the years, so allowance for price increases must be made. Anyone who has been ordering silver nitrate for some period of time has seen an extreme example of this. 

A very large number of reagents have been studied for their potential for the chemical modification of wood. In almost all cases, these involve reaction with the cell wall polymeric hydroxyl groups. In the main, reactions described in this chapter are unlikely to be suitable for scale-up to industrial processes. In many cases, the cost of reagent and/or difficulties in handling large quantities of potentially toxic reagent remain considerable barriers to exploitation. 

Quantitative RT PCR (qRT PCR) can be used to accurately determine the levels of messages within given preparations of RNA. qRT PCR thermocyclers provide rapid online detection and quantification of mRNA, however, the initial purchase cost and the cost of reagents may be prohibitive for some laboratories. Methods of semiquantitative RT PCR have been used and good descriptions of these techniques are available (Samhrook and Russell, 2001). However, the same cDNA populations should not be used for differential display reactions and verification that a potential differential display band represents a differentially expressed gene. For this reason, independent cDNA samples should be prepared if both the screening and verification methods rely on PCR. qRT PCR, therefore, should be used in conjunction with other methods to verify that a differential display band represents a differentially expressed gene. 

Table 5. Cost of reagents used in applied processes...

On the basis of retail cost of reagents, 142 costs approximately ten-fold less than 163. 

According to the vendor, the costs of reagents, on-site technical support personnel, and onsite quality assurance personnel were 60 per ton of soil treated at a former electroplating facility in McPherson, Kansas. The reagents were applied to 1500 yd of chromium-contaminated soil (D113382, p. 15). 

For the preparation of 2-phenyloxazols the nickel hydroxide electrode is an attractive alternative to other oxidation reagents (Table 16) especially with regard to the cost of reagents and simplicity of work-up. 

For the preparation of large compound libraries, the cost of reagents and resins is a further issue that must be considered. Some supports, e.g. resin-bound phenols or N-hydroxybenzotriazole, which enable the preparation of resin-bound, reactive esters (Section 3.3.3), can be reused many times without the need to dismantle the reactor, and are therefore much more cost-efficient than supports that can only be used once [136,137], Reactions such as the acylation of amines with resin-bound acylating agents have the additional advantage that only one equivalent of amine is needed, which again leads to a substantial reduction of costs. 

Cost of Reagents and Waste Disposal in Dilute H2S04 Pretreatment Process (3)... 

This has several advantages over the other methods mentioned above chief among which is the much lower cost of reagents and the fact that the use of heavy metals is limited to catalytic amounts. In a similar approach, hypochlorite was used in the presence of perruthenate catalysts to oxidize acetals of ascorbic and iso-ascorbic acid to optically pure acetals of glyceric acid (9). 

One of the most powerful ways to drive home all of these points is by keeping track of waste. This can be done by several methods. Doxsee and Hutchison (2004) suggest performing an economic analysis of the entire process. For an economic analysis, students calculate all of the costs of reagents and solvents per gram of product obtained. This figure can be determined with or without the cost of waste disposal. Students are amazed to find that factoring in waste can often double the cost of production. 

The costs of any radioimmunoassay system lie largely in labor reagents and capital equipment make only a small contribution. However, costs of reagents should always be taken into account, and in the case of the separation system can vary widely. Chemical precipitations are the cheapest of all—a fraction of a cent per tube. The most expensive systems are those that are labor intensive (e.g., electrophoresis) or that require considerable effort for the original preparation of reagents (e.g., solid-phase systems). 

A concern in recent research involving immunodetection has been availability, quality, and cost of reagents, especially of antibody and receptor preparations. In the future, this concern may be overcome with novel cloning techniques providing possibilities to drastically reduce the cost of producing proteins as well as to develop proteins for specific applications. 

Spectrophotometric methods fall into three categories those based on enzyme activation, those that detect the spectral shift produced when either Na or binds to a macrocyclic chroraophore, and fluorescent sensors. Both approaches have been applied to smaller automated instruments. However, the high cost of reagents for these methods and the fact that few problems exist with ISE methods has resulted in small niche use of these methods, primarily in some smaller instruments used in physicians offices or clinics. 

Decisions regarding the choice of a specific amplification test for the detection of CT and GC should not be based solely on the cost of reagents. Other key factors to consider include test performance characteristics, such as diagnostic sensitivity and specificity, and whether the test has been cleared for urine and swab specunens in both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. Ideally the test should include an internal control, particularly if a crude lysate is used in the assay. Other factors to consider are degree of automation, ease of use, work flow issues, and space and equipment needs. 

There is a growing movement to select reagents based on atom efficiency in order to minimize both environmental impact and disposal costs. These costs must be considered in conjunction with overall costs of reagents and productivity. Table 3.4 compares characteristics for some methylating reagents. 

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