Automation of Routine Microplate Pipetting and Dispensing

Quantitative assays of all sorts are common to many applications in basic science and clinical research. Most of these assays require the movement, either addition or subtraction, of liquid reagents. Historically these assays were performed in test tubes. However, regardless of the assay method employed, laboratories requiring high throughput have often adapted the described protocol to a 96-well, and more recently, a 384-well format. Despite the adaptation, processing large numbers of samples generally represents a large investment in manpower, with automation primarily taking place at the endpoint of reading the plate. The standardized matrix and spacing of the wells in microplates, 8 x 12 and 16 x 24, for 96and 384-well microplates, respectively, has allowed the use of manual multichannel pipettes to pick up and dispense liquids when these microplates are employed. While these devices have certainly made pipetting fluids into these arrays much easier, they still require a high degree of manual manipulation. With today’s throughput requirements, this still represents a very tedious and time-consuming task. Towards that end, BioTek Instruments (Winooski, VT) has developed the Precision 2000 Automated Pipetting System to eliminate the need for manual pipetting into these plate formats. Although the performance of the Precision 2000 Automated Pipetting System has only been specified at volumes near 100 μl, its typical performance at much lower volumes is quite remarkable. In this monograph we will describe the dispense accuracy, linearity, and precision of the Precision 2000 at low volumes.