The Ambion® brand encompasses a complete range of products for researchers whose work involves RNA. These include products for isolation, amplification, and stabilization of RNA. RNA can be a difficult molecule to work with. It is readily degraded by RNases that are found in a variety of environmental sources, including fingerprints. While many procedures will tolerate small amounts of RNases, the most critical procedures require virtually nucleasefree conditions. This means that Ambion® had to develop a variety of specialized manufacturing and quality control procedures to insure the proper and reliable functioning of its products.
Early in its history, Ambion® set a goal of offering the highest quality and purity enzymes and reagents. Ambion® enzymes are purified to much higher levels than normally occurs within the industry. Ambion® kits are designed to work well not only under perfect conditions, but also when there is inadvertent introduction of partially degraded RNA by investigators, RNase contamination, or other less-than-ideal conditions. This is referred to as "building robustness" into the products and continues to be a primary focus of product development today.