It doesn’t happen often that products developed almost three decades ago remain not only on the product list but as one of the most popular products overall. This is, however, the case with our main polymerases. These have become classics that seem to never go out of style, like jeans or a little black dress. So, what makes them so special? Let’s take a look!

Solis BioDyne was founded in 1995. From the very start, the idea has been to make products that are room-temperature stable and exhibit extraordinarily long shelf life. This is where our patented Stability TAG technology comes into play. The great thing about it is that so far it seems to come with only pros and no cons. Stability TAG enhances the stability of proteins without compromising their existing beneficial properties. This technology has been an integral part of our inventions from the very beginning and has always been incorporated into all our standard products.

Our very first product, FIREPol® DNA polymerase (now FIREPol® DNA polymerase Kit), has also been with us from the start. It’s a highly processive, thermostable wild-type Thermus aquaticus DNA Polymerase with some mutations and thus with its own very specific behaviour and characteristics that provides robust and reproducible results. The first batch was produced on the 30^th of April 1996, and we still have it in our freezer as a time capsule! A decade ago, we tested it and confirmed that it was still stable and functional. We plan to test it again in another ten years or so to see if anything has changed.

At the time, most polymerases on the market had uninspired names like “Taq polymerase this” or “Taq polymerase that.” We wanted to stand out— not just in our home market of Estonia, but globally. The name FIREPol® reflects our ambition and courage, daring scientists to use it as if they were playing with fire.

Our first client to buy this product was NICPB (National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics), followed by the University of Tartu, and then the third was already from the USA. Nowadays, scientists around the world are using it for various applications, like studying genetic diseases, human parasites, animal viruses, soil composition, etc.

Since 1998, FIREPol® has been accompanied by 10x Reaction Buffer B and 10x Reaction Buffer BD. While simple in concept, these buffers have proven to be incredibly useful and are incorporated into most of our products, even the newer ones. Fun facts: 1) The “B” in the buffer name doesn’t stand for “buffer” as one might assume — it actually signifies that the “A” version didn’t work out; 2) and the”BD” means without detergents.

As we entered the new millennium, we introduced TERMIPol® DNA Polymerase (now TERMIPol® DNA Polymerase Kit) — a polymerase designed for MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and other applications involving unconventional nucleotides. The name highlights its ability to terminate DNA chains if ddNTPs used. If you would like to get a more thorough knowledge about the features of this product, we recommend taking a look at the paper “The enhancement of homogenous mass extension reaction: Comparison of two enzymes” by Tikka-Kleemola, et al. (2007).

In 2002, FIREPol® DNA polymerase got a hot upgrade, and we launched HOT FIREPol® DNA Polymerase (now HOT FIREPol® DNA Polymerase Kit). It’s a chemically modified hot-start version of FIREPol® DNA Polymerase. This enzyme is activated only by pre-incubation at 95°C, preventing unspecific polymerase activity at lower temperatures during reaction set-up. Why we opted for a chemical hot start instead of, for example, an antibody-mediated hot start is because there are fewer contamination risks, and chemical inhibitors are generally more stable than antibodies, which can degrade over time. In addition, chemical hot start is less expensive than antibody-based methods. This makes our product a lot more affordable, but definitely not less valuable.

Fun fact: the initial activation time for HOT FIREPol® DNA Polymerase was 30 minutes, but we’ve refined it down to just 10-15 minutes!

A few years later, in 2005, we didn’t just launch one new product—we introduced three! To better accommodate special requests, we brought dNTP MIX and dUTP to the market, which are great options for those who want to make their own enzyme mixes. In addition, we added the hot start version of the TERMIPol® DNA Polymerase - HOT TERMIPol® DNA Polymerase to our product list.

Of course, since the second half of 2005 we have launched many more products, but that is a story for next time. Stay tuned!