Tecan Speeds up High Throughput Scrapie Genotyping

The Laboratorio Central de Veterinaria in Madrid has announced that it is using Tecan's Freedom EVO series of robotic workstations to develop an automated, high throughput application to identify 'at risk' animals.

Scrapie genotyping is based on a single nucleotide extension (SNE) assay that identifies four polymorphisms within the PRNP prion protein encoding gene affecting the susceptibility of an individual animal for the disease.

Stephan Sidler, Head of the laboratory, explained, "New legislation requires all member states of the EU to establish a breeding programme to improve scrapie resistance in sheep, and genotyping is a useful way to select animals for this."

"We chose Tecan instruments because they were compatible with our 384 well format and they offered reliability, durability and flexibility to help us reach our two main goals of high throughput with reduced consumable costs."

"Primary sample distribution is done on two Freedom EVO 150s using the PosID module for sample bar code identification."

"Two Freedom EVO 200s with the Te-MO 96 pipettor option, using both fixed steel and disposable tips, then perform the DNA extraction, PCR set-up and PCR reactions, with both PCR clean-up and enzymatic clean-up following the SNE assay done on the Te-MO 384 channel pipetting option."

"The Tecan high throughput, automated instruments mean that we have reached our goal of achieving 95 per cent of results within two weeks."