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iPipet: sample handling using a tablet

Nature Methods volume 11, pages 784–785 (2014)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

Biological experiments increasingly involve large numbers of specimens, making liquid handling in these experiments a challenge. We and other groups previously devised high-throughput experimental designs using combinatorial pooling schemes that reduce experiment costs but require complex pipetting steps according to mathematical patterns1,2,3. We used a liquid-handling robot to execute experiments with bacteria4, but we found that using a robot with sensitive human samples has several caveats and inherent limitations, such as occasional robotic failures, dead volume (inability to aspirate liquid close to the bottom of the well) and bending or clogging of tips owing to plate septum piercing that risked finite samples. In addition, liquid-handling robots are quite expensive and require trained personnel to operate them.

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Acknowledgements

Y.E. is funded as an Andria and Paul Heafy Family Fellow and by a Career Award at the Scientific Interface from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. This work was supported by US National Human Genome Research Institute grant R21HG006167.

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Author notes

  1. Dina Zielinski and Assaf Gordon: These authors equally contributed to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Dina Zielinski, Assaf Gordon & Yaniv Erlich

  2. Zaks Design, Ra'anana, Israel

    Benjamin L Zaks

Authors
  1. Dina Zielinski
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  2. Assaf Gordon
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  3. Benjamin L Zaks
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  4. Yaniv Erlich
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yaniv Erlich.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Note, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Figures 1 and 2 (PDF 330 kb)

Supplementary Data

Pipetting variations in iPipet versus a robotic system (XLSX 37 kb)

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Zielinski, D., Gordon, A., Zaks, B. et al. iPipet: sample handling using a tablet. Nat Methods 11, 784–785 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3028

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