ICCB > Screening

The screening facility has three levels of liquid handling robots, varying in speed and accuracy. The levels are as follows: high speed and lower accuracy; medium speed and medium accuracy; lower speed and high accuracy. All equipment can be used to rapidly fill both 96- and 384- well assay plates with protein solutions or cells.

The screening facility has four general use Matrix WellMates used for 96 or 384-well shallow deep well plates. These plate fillers are high-speed liquid dispensing units. All four units are integrated with Matrix stacker units that accommodate up to 30 plates, and the stacker units are open to the front so plates can be loaded easily while remaining in the sterile environment of the hood. The filler utilizes an 8-channel cartridge, with each nozzle fed by a separate tube and driven by a peristaltic pump. The entire tubing assembly is removable and can be autoclaved or replaced as needed in cases where sterility during dispensing is essential.

The WellMate can be programmed to fill specific plate columns as desired by the user, and is capable of dispensing 2.0 to 2000 µL in increments of 1 µL. However, we do not recommend dispense volumes of less than 5 ul, as there is significant variability for smaller volumes. The priming volume for these liquid handlers is about 6-10mL. In addition, between each Microplate that is filled there is a 0.1mL of reagent that is an automatic prime and cannot be recovered.

The Screening Facility has two µFills (MicroFills) from Bio-Tek Instruments. The µFill is a single-position rapid-dispense plate filler with a volume range of 5uL to 1500uL for 384-well plates and 10-3000uL for 96-well plates. The instrument can process 96 or 384 shallow and deep-well plates, and its 16-channel manifold can fill either in about four or twelve seconds respectively. The priming volume for these liquid handlers is about 13-20mL.

Currently, the Screening Facility has both of the µFills integrated with Bio-Tek Bio-Stacks. The entire pump assembly can be removed and autoclaved for sterile liquid-handling. Pump assembly ordering information can be found on the Screening Supplies page.

The screening facility has two Bio-Tek Precision 2000 robots, (medium speed, medium accuracy) liquid handling devices. They are highly versatile devices equipped with an eight-channel dispense manifold and an eight-channel pipette head. The instruments support a wide variety of fluid transfer operations for both 96 or 384 well microplates including reagent addition, continuous reagent dispensing, sample transfer, plate replication, serial dilutions, and mixing within a well. The robots can accurately pipette volumes between 5 and 120 ul. Using the dispense-only manifold, the minimum volume transferred is 15 ul. The priming volume when using the dispense manifold is about 20mL. When using the pipettor an additional 2mL's is required to cover the bottom of the reservoir.

If you use this robot frequently, you can purchase your own 8-channel dispense manifold as well as tips that are compatible with the instrument. The ordering information can be found on the Screening Supplies page.

The Velocity11 Bravo is a versatile liquid handler enclosed in the ICCBL BioprotectII hood. This instrument has an open air flow design and has both 96 and 384 channel disposable tip pipette heads. It is capable of accurately pipetting from 0.5 to 200uL. It is primarily used for siRNA liquid handling, including both screening and library reformatting.

The Velocity11 VPrep is a precision pipettor system that features interchangeable heads. ICCBL owns both 96 and 384 disposable pipette heads, with volume ranges from 0.5 to 200uL. This liquid handler features eight moveable shelves, two of which are for disposable tip boxes (blue boxes pictured above). The ICCBL primarily uses this system for small molecule reformatting.

The CyBio CyBi-Well vario system is a high accuracy liquid handling device, with additional pin-transfer capabilities (click here for pin-transfer details). The CyBi-Well vario employs an interchangeable 96 and 384-channel pipette head that can accurately handle volumes between 1 and 225 ul using disposable pipette tips. The CyBi-Well vario is equipped with two stacker systems that allow for unattended use. For liquid handling, the pipettor requires an additional volume to cover the bottom of the reservoir, this can be as low as 5mL depending on the liquid reservoir being used.