Mineral oil quality in PCR tubes - (Aug/13/2015 )

Is it important to use molecular biology grade mineral oil in PCR tubes, if the products are to be analyzed by next gen sequencing? I plan to use a clean up kit prior to analysis.

Come on, MBG quality mineral oil is very inexpensive.   Do you really want to take the chance with non-MBG quality oil that may have salts, DNA, crap associated with it that could migrate to your reaction volume and make your conditions unfavourable?
Why take the risk for something so inexpensive?

Got it. Thanks!

Just as a thought - do you actually need mineral oil on your PCR's?

I've found that more often than not, even for very small reaction volumes you get perfectly consistent results without it.  
I've never enjoyed getting my samples from under the oil so I've eliminated it where I could.

I think not. I just tried a new unit and got good results with just the heated lid, no mineral oil. But I may have to use a unit without a heated lid at times. Then I would want to use mineral oil.

Quite so.