For those who grew up in the third industrial revolution, the fourth can be a bit daunting. Will robots take my job? Will machine learning and artificial intelligence learn how to interpret my thoughts and use them to deal with me? About one-third of the workforce of the world’s richest companies is robots. As long as they have strong arms and backs, management now often regards them as replaceable parts, while the cost is greatly reduced.

Laboratory work generally does not require a lot of physical strength. Therefore, in bench science, robotics is designed and used as a supporting technology for two key purposes: 1) Minimize the time for manual operation of samples, thereby reducing imposed errors and pollution, and improving statistical repeatability; 2) Eliminate tedious or redundant preparation steps to simplify work and maximize throughput. If you think about your general molecular biology experiment and plan your day or week around it, you will usually find that most of the time you need to budget corresponds to the time required to add solution A to B 24 times, and then add the mixture Centrifuge and aspirate or separate the liquid phase. Do you remember to add the solution to tube 23? Continue to guess until the final spectrophotometer reading is obtained. Robotic automation of these and similar steps can alleviate this tedium and uncertainty and free up the precious time needed to analyze data and plan experiments.

In the biomedical research laboratory environment, liquid handlers are the visible and correspondingly expensive superstars of robotic workstations. Especially for large-scale genome and chemical screening projects, they can greatly increase throughput and eliminate human influence, making full use of the inherent sensitivity of next-generation sequencing or high-throughput screening (HTS) technology. However, if liquid handlers are superstars, what are the main forces supporting robots against human defects, and what functions can they perform as independent technologies?

It is very likely that your experience with the vacuum manifold is limited to reading the protocol options listed in the nucleic acid extraction kit, and deciding that since you don’t know what it is, you probably don’t, then skip to centrifugation-based on the procedure you are familiar with. The vacuum manifold is usually a linear device with positional placement for the column, one-way cock, and vacuum tube attachments. They eliminate some of the pipetting and centrifugation operations that can become so burdensome in nucleic acid extraction. Since the vacuum pressure is usually low (1 bar) and the vacuum is drawn through a series of manifolds, consistency can be elusive when throughput is a priority. However, the principle can be extended to accommodate larger applications and integrated into the robot framework to provide support in the automation process. The Ultimaration positive pressure SPE extractor is an improvement of the vacuum manifold, with a pressure difference of up to 7 bar, and the coverage of micropores is consistent and reproducible. It can be used as a stand-alone device for solid-phase extraction of nucleic acids or liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry samples, as well as buffer and media filtration or concentration procedures. In addition, it can be incorporated into the HTS platform as an iterative plate washer or aspirator. A basic principle of robotic workstation design is to allow accurate grasping, movement and positioning of standard microplates with SBS footprints. Adaptability includes the ability to adapt to different heights and volumes, as well as sending them to or receiving them from robotic plate handlers and stackers, such as Hudson Robotics PlateCrane and LabLinx Microplate Stackers, respectively. With these accessories, the vacuum manifold can become a true high-throughput robotic workstation.

Magnetic bead-based separation greatly improves the ability of manual operation and high-throughput separation. Since specific functional groups can be coupled to beads to introduce specificity, it may have higher and more consistent yields. The magnetic beads consist of a metal alloy core, which varies according to the supplier, but in practice can be adjusted to attract targets, including nucleic acids, streptavidin and specific antibodies. Use Hudson Robotics Magnetic Bead Station to automate bead-based separation. By programmatically raising and lowering the strong magnet at the bottom of the microplate, the beads are evenly moved to the periphery so that the liquid handling robot can suck and repipette Buffer. This process eliminates the time consumed by centrifugation or vacuum manifold steps and effectively separates the desired product from the buffer and contaminants. Innovation is leading to improvements, at least in terms of nucleic acid extraction, beyond magnetic beads to eliminate consumables, so it is possible to further simplify and optimize the protocol. Purigen Biosystems provides ion purification systems that use isotachophoresis to separate, purify, and concentrate genomic DNA from cells and tissues. Future upgrades should expand the coverage of different types of nucleic acids and expand to 96-well and 384-well microplates for robotic integration.

Although magnetic separators and vacuum manifolds can find key laboratory roles as stand-alone projects, fully integrated robotic systems can now be used and can be used as a proof of principle. More and more laboratory work can be automated, providing more Analysis opportunities and discussions replace pipetting and aspiration. Hudson Robotics Protean Workcell provides a vertically integrated and adaptable system to minimize footprint and maximize versatility. It is built around the SciClops Plus robotic arm and can accommodate up to nine levels in the work area. It can house automatic microplate stackers/feeders, barcode readers, and conveyor belt storage systems to accommodate hundreds of additional Microplate. In addition, their RapidHit system can simplify HTS and minimize researchers' errors. In this setting, the hit threshold is defined and programmed by the user, and the position of the hole in the primary screening plate that exceeds the threshold prompts RapidHit to move the temporary hit to the secondary plate for verification analysis. Therefore, the system reduces the delay time between primary and secondary determinations, and minimizes user errors in transferring and identifying hit candidates, and improves consistency and reliability by ensuring that the secondary concentration is the same as the primary concentration. Repeatability. Soon, such equipment may become part of ordinary laboratories.

Tag: Automation Workstation High-throughput Screening Laboratory Automation Product Resource: Product Focus Robot

New technology helps laboratory managers optimize efficiency and results

© 2021 Laboratory Manager. all rights reserved.