Fan Jinzhen, Men Yongfan, Hao Tseng Kuo, Ding Yi, Ding Yunfeng, Villarreal Fernando, Tan Cheemeng, Li Baoqing, Pan Tingrui
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA.
Biomicrofluidics. 2018 May 21;12(3):034107. doi: 10.1063/1.5030629. eCollection 2018 May.
Manual micropipettes are the most heavily used liquid handling devices in biological and chemical laboratories; however, they suffer from low precision for volumes under 1 l and inevitable human errors. For a manual device, the human errors introduced pose potential risks of failed experiments, inaccurate results, and financial costs. Meanwhile, low precision under 1 l can cause severe quantification errors and high heterogeneity of outcomes, becoming a bottleneck of reaction miniaturization for quantitative research in biochemical labs. Here, we report Dotette, a programmable, plug-and-play microfluidic pipetting device based on nanoliter liquid printing. With automated control, protocols designed on computers can be directly downloaded into Dotette, enabling programmable operation processes. Utilizing continuous nanoliter droplet dispensing, the precision of the volume control has been successfully improved from traditional 20%-50% to less than 5% in the range of 100 nl to 1000 nl. Such a highly automated, plug-and-play add-on to existing pipetting devices not only improves precise quantification in low-volume liquid handling and reduces chemical consumptions but also facilitates and automates a variety of biochemical and biological operations.
手动微量移液器是生物和化学实验室中使用最频繁的液体处理设备；然而，对于1微升以下的体积，它们的精度较低，并且不可避免地存在人为误差。对于手动设备而言，引入的人为误差会带来实验失败、结果不准确以及财务成本等潜在风险。同时，1微升以下的低精度会导致严重的定量误差和结果的高度异质性，成为生化实验室定量研究中反应小型化的瓶颈。在此，我们报告了Dotette，一种基于纳升液体打印的可编程、即插即用的微流控移液设备。通过自动控制，在计算机上设计的协议可以直接下载到Dotette中，实现可编程的操作流程。利用连续纳升液滴分配，在100纳升至1000纳升范围内，体积控制的精度已成功从传统的20%-50%提高到小于5%。这种高度自动化、即插即用的现有移液设备附加装置不仅提高了低体积液体处理中的精确定量，减少了化学消耗，还促进并自动化了各种生化和生物操作。
