Recent advancements in lab automation liquid handling, including contactless dispensing, miniaturization, AI integration, and cloud control, enhance accuracy, efficiency, and sustainability.
Recent advancements in lab automation liquid handling have led to the increasing popularity of these devices in everyday lab experimentation1. Significant progression in accuracy and precision, in addition to increasing ease of use for non-experts, has expanded the reach of lab automation liquid handling devices. Various innovations have transformed scientific workflows, enabling scientists to carry out high throughput experiments without compromising accuracy or precision and enabling scientists to use their time more effectively, focusing on complex tasks and analyses rather than labor-intensive processes prone to human error2.
Contactless liquid handling innovations are one such innovation in lab automation liquid handling. While previous techniques use air displacement to dispense liquid through single-use pipette tips, contactless techniques provide tip-free solutions. Acoustic droplet ejection – the use of acoustic waves to manipulate droplets3 – and air pressure – where pressure pulses are used to eject liquid – are two methods by which contactless dispensers work.
The use of contactless dispensing minimizes cross-contamination and carryover as the droplets are isolated from both the solid structures containing the liquid – eliminating surface adsorption – and the wells being filled3. These dispensing techniques also offer high accuracy and precision, including at low volumes. For example, DISPENDIX’s I.DOT can dispense liquids at a volume of only 4 nL with 0.1 nL resolution. In addition, the integrated volume verification system ensures that you know exactly how much has been dispensed into each well. Dispensing reagents and samples without the use of pipette tips also has cost-saving effects, as labs can significantly reduce the number of consumables (such as pipette tips) being purchased (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. The I.DOT Liquid Handler dispenses liquids using contact-free technology, decreasing the use of single-use plastic pipette tips.
Reaction miniaturization is the scaling down of assays to a significantly lower reaction volume while maintaining accuracy. Lab automation liquid handling enables reaction miniaturization by maintaining dispensing accuracy at low reagent volumes4. Reaction miniaturization leads to significant cost-saving benefits as expensive reagents and precious samples can be used in up to 10 times the number of experiments. For example, one lab group found that miniaturizing their RNA-seq experiments would have estimated cost-savings of 86%5.
Miniaturization has been utilized in lab-on-a-chip technologies, where microfluidics is used to control the movement of reactants and samples through a chip to enable a full experiment to be carried out on a single chip. These are being produced for diagnostic purposes, allowing point-of-care testing6. The combination of microfluidics and miniaturization is also being used in single-cell analysis, where microfluidics can be used to isolate single cells, and miniaturized reactions can be carried out on the same chip7.
DISPENDIX’s I.DOT Liquid Handler has been designed with miniaturization at the forefront. The accuracy of the I.DOT enables volumes to be pipetted with high resolution, enabling reactions to be miniaturized by as high as a factor of 10 and saving both reagents and money.
Cloud-based lab automation liquid handling allows lab operations to be remotely controlled in real-time, increasing flexibility and accessibility. Significant advances were made in these technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic to enable lab work to continue when social distancing was necessary8. These systems work by integrating cloud computing with the Internet of Things (IoT – devices with the ability to connect to each other and the Internet) to control each step of the workflow. Users control and monitor experiments through a web interface that communicates in real time9. Not only do these systems allow the control of experiments remotely, but they also encourage data and protocol sharing9. Further advantages include improving experiment efficiency, such as through parallelization (carrying out multiple steps at once), and increasing accessibility10.
Sustainability is a growing concern in experimental lab research. Labs produce large amounts of waste, particularly single-use plastics – such as the necessity for using hundreds of pipette tips to avoid sample contamination (Fig. 2). The average biology lab has been estimated to produce 4000 kg of plastic waste per year11. Much of this waste is contaminated with biological or hazardous substances, often resulting in it having to be incinerated12. Lab automation of liquid handling provides an alternative to single-use plastics. Automated liquid dispensing does not use pipette tips and, therefore, reduces plastic waste in this form13. Not only does this decrease the lab’s waste output and increase sustainability, but reducing the number of pipette tips used also saves money. Lab automation of liquid handling provides additional sustainability benefits by reducing reagent waste through minimized dead volumes and also reducing the production of hazardous waste through reaction minimization14.
DISPENDIX’s I.DOT increases sustainability through the use of contact-free liquid dispensing, removing the need for pipette tips and other single-use plastics and enabling reaction minimization.
Figure 2. Scientific labs produce large volumes of plastic waste due to the necessity for single-use plastics to avoid contamination. (Source)
To further increase the accuracy of lab automation liquid handling, AI is increasingly being incorporated into liquid handling systems. Machine learning algorithms can monitor dispensing in real time and optimize conditions as necessary15. For example, a company specializing in digital microfluidics has demonstrated the use of AI to monitor droplet morphology in order to improve droplet control16.
Lab automation liquid handling is a growing trend in life sciences. Advancements in technology, such as contactless liquid handling, experiment miniaturization, cloud-controlled systems, and AI-assisted dispensing, are providing increased accuracy, precision, efficiency, and sustainability.
Discover how DISPENDIX can enhance precision, efficiency, and reproducibility in your lab through our lab automation liquid handling technology. Download the I.DOT brochure or the G.PREP brochure and take the next step in transforming your workflows!
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