Patent ID: 8809040

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a reaction region holding assembly configured to hold a plurality of reaction regions and comprising a thermal cycler block configured to affect a polymerase chain reaction; an excitation light source capable of providing a plurality of separate excitation beams, each excitation beam including a wavelength range that is not provided by the other excitation beams of the plurality of separate excitation beams, the excitation light source being capable of directing each excitation beam along a beam path toward a single reaction region to which none of the other excitation beams are directed; a plurality of corresponding beam splitters configured to receive respective ones of the plurality of separate excitation beams, each beam splitter disposed along an optical path between the excitation light source and a respective one of the reaction regions; a control unit capable of individually activating each of the plurality of excitation beams independently from activating the other ones of the plurality of excitation beams; and a plurality of detectors, each detector capable of detecting emission beams emitted from a single reaction region from which none of the other detectors is capable of detecting emission beams; wherein each beam splitter is disposed along a respective emission beam path between a respective one of the reaction regions and a respective one of the detectors.