Development and Validation of an Automated Liquid Handling System for Sample Preparation Based on Multichannel Air Displacement Pipetting Technology

摘要

High-throughput liquid handling technology has been widely used in modern life science laboratories due to its ability to efficiently process multiple samples, especially in those integrated devices or instruments for high-throughput bioassays with the help of nanotechnology. In this paper, we have presented an automated liquid handling system with an 8-channel pipetting arm based on the air displacement principle. We endeavored to optimize our control model by considering environmental factors (temperature, humidity) and the liquid properties (viscosity, volatility). The gravimetric method was introduced to evaluate the accuracy and precision of this liquid handling system. The results showed high degree of accuracy and precision have been achieved. Furthermore, DNA extraction from 96 Escherichia coli samples using magnetic particles was carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed system and verify its ability for practical use. Next efforts will be focused on the development of robotic applications for other stages of the analytical process such as PCR and fluorescence detection, and the total sample-to-answer workstation in the end.