Benefits of Using the I.DOT Regarding Repeatability & Reproducibility

Comparable results are a basic requirement in science which is not always easy to obtain. This is the same situation for either different laboratories or even different people within one lab. Studies have shown that 50 up to 90% of studies are not reproduceable, therefore the journal ‘Nature’ even speaks of a reproducibility crisis.

Factors which influence the reproducibility and repeatability are often the method description of an assay, the quality of the analysis devices, the statistics used for the evaluation and the performance of an assay. This is exactly where the benefits of using the I.DOT can help eliminating errors.

A general advantage of using automated liquid handling is the ablation of the personal failure of the operating person. The I.DOT is calibrated with a tolerance of ±5% (and 8% below 100 nanoliters), with which it is performing equally under the same environmental conditions.

In common research methods like Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) library prep, qRT-PCR, drug discovery or ELISA assays, the critical aspects of liquid handling are the dispensing of small volumes and liquids with different properties like master mixes, enzymes, antibodies etc. which can be viscous and foamy. The I.DOT uses unique Liquid classes for each Liquid type. These can be adjusted to the respective characteristics and ensures accurate dispensing, even for small volumes down to 8 nl.

The technology of the I.DOT enables the dispensing of droplets into the target plate in a contactless manner. This eliminates carryover and cross-contamination, as well as the influences of the immersion depth and pipetting angle, which is often the cause for irreproducible and unrepeatable results.

The I.DOT uses 8 individually controlled pressure channels and each channel can generate 100 droplets per second. Due to this speed, it is possible to dispense 10 nl across a 96-well plate in 10 sec. This leads to a significant time saving during the preparation of experiments, which reduces the sensitivity for environmental influences especially for delicate higher throughput experiments like NGS or qPCR.

With solving several problems that endanger reproducibility and repeatability at a time the I.DOT is a significant asset in getting more accurate and reliable results in science research.