Latest Application Notes

In recent years, the automation of cell (including bacteria)-based screening assays has consistently shown to provide reduced times and considerable labor saving, while maintaining or increasing assay quality during screening campaigns.

The objective of the study was to evaluate the ergonomics and usability of six manual, singlechannel pipettes. This was done by measuring the load and strain symptoms exhibited by workers’ muscles and joints, and evaluating the usability features of pipettes in a simulated work situation.

This application note demonstrates how the reverse pipetting technique can improve the repeatability of dispensing liquids that contain proteins.

In this application note the antimicrobial properties of the Thermo Scientific Finnpipette F1 were compared to traditional pipettes without antimicrobial treatment. The experiments were performed by an independent laboratory (Institut für Biotechnische Forschung und Entwicklung Graf GmbH, Kirkel-Limbach, Germany).

High throughput cell-based assays are an important part of drug screening, and successfully dispensing viable cells is a key step in the process. Automated reagent dispensers are used to achieve higher throughput in the screening laboratories. Dispense must not only be quick, it must also be gentle enough to ensure cell viability.

During device qualification, one verifies and documents whether the equipment, in this case a pipette, is reliable and capable of fulfilling the requirements of its intended use. All qualification activities are fully documented according to pertinent quality and regulatory requirements and signed by authorized personnel.

This application note discusses the use of a Thermo Scientific Finnpipette Novus Electronic Pipette for the preparation of standard curves. With 10 different functions, the versatile Novus Electronic pipette can perform most every standard curve required. The pipette’s performance was compared to a manual Thermo Scientific Finnpipette model to determine if there were appreciable differences in pipetting speed and accuracy during curve preparation.

This application note explains how to perform a rapid, high throughput screening assay of mutated photoprotein aequorin in order to find clones with more intense, slower kinetic, narrow spectral or color-shifted bioluminescent emission. Several examples of bioluminescent emission kinetics and spectra of mutated aequorins are included.

Two cell-based signaling assays from Invitrogen, Fluo-4 Direct™ Calcium Assay and Tango™-bla U2OS GPCR Assay, were performed on the PHERAstar FS HTS instrument. The PHERAstar FS has several unique features that enhance the performance of these assays including direct optic bottom reading, high resolution cell layer scanning, injection at the point of measurement and dual emission detection.

Millipore Corporation and Molecular Devices have partnered to provide platforms for solubility and permeability screening. The objective is to create automation-compatible 96- and 384-based systems with pre-validated methods, devices and analysis that can be run manually or in conjunction with standard laboratory automation.