The microplate is an important element of cell-based assay protocols and is designed so that multiple tests can run in parallel. The plates are easily incorporated into high-throughput workflows, to increase screening efficiency. However, the occurrence of edge effect poses a major limitation in obtaining a streamlined, high throughput protocol. During culture, water and media commonly evaporate from the wells that are closest to the perimeter of the plate, with the outer 36 and corner wells being the most affected. The result is a variation in cell growth across the plate, while any media components, such as salt, can become concentrated to the point where they are harmful to the cells. A volume loss as small as 10% can concentrate media components and metabolites enough to alter cell physiology, consequently impacting on the viability of downstream data, causing heterogeneous or biased results to occur. As a result, the trend has been to not use the outermost wells to avoid this variability. Not using all 96 wells means that throughput and therefore efficiency, is substantially reduced.
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