Robotics to Support Experimental Design for Microtiter Plates

• Activity Number: 205
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 10, 2004 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences
• Author(s): John S. Snider*+ and Tim Sherrill and Nate Terpstra and Jeremy Smith and Jacob Schlitz
• Companies: Beckman Coulter, Inc. and Beckman Coulter, Inc. and Beckman Coulter, Inc. and Beckman Coulter, Inc. and Beckman Coulter, Inc.
• Keywords: DOE ; automation ; microtiter plates ; liquid handling ; assay development

Abstract

Researchers in life sciences are challenged to design robust assays where numerous factors influencing performance must be investigated. DOE allows researchers to study multiple factors simultaneously with relatively few tests. Although the potential benefits of DOE for assay development have been acknowledged for many years, it has been avoided or limited in scope because of the lack of tools to cope with the cumbersome liquid handling. We have developed practical tools to make DOE for assay development feasible. Large, complex designs are now possible, and we give examples. Our commercially available products use robotic liquid-handling workstations to automate experimentation. Liquid handling is no longer too tedious and time-consuming to perform on a large scale. Our products assign treatment conditions to microtiter plates, collect information needed to perform experiments, and create automated liquid handling methods. Experimental results can be collected via automated microtiter plate readers and reported in several formats for analysis. The above process, required tools, technical challenges related to creating the tools, and benefits of this approach are described.