Robotic Sample Preparation System Based on Magnetic Separation

The development of laboratory automation for genetic experiments is driven by constantly increasing workload and cost pressure. In this paper, we presented a cost-effective solution to reconfigure a liquid handling system to become a workstation for sample preparation and downstream applications. An exchangeable adapter was designed, by which the system can be equipped with an 8-channel pipettor for liquid processing or a robotic gripper for labware transferring. Magnetic nanoparticles-based nucleic acid extraction was carried out to evaluate the performance of the workstation. Contamination survey was checked by a streamline experiment (from DNA isolation to real-time PCR assay). The results indicated that our robotic solution was able to carry out sample preparations and downstream applications in a streamline manner. However, some challenges still need to be overcome before implementing this system for a wider range of applications. Hardware, software and reagent kits still need further optimization to ensure reliability, cost-efficiency and user friendly.