The motivation to maximize laboratory automation is as powerful as it is simple—laboratories must produce more high quality data—faster and cheaper. Today, most envision high throughput (HTP) automation as a robotically-driven integration

From protein sample preparation to next-generation sequencing to cell biology or the now more traditional HTS assays, many scientists are trying to eliminate the numerous manual steps that add cost and introduce variability to laboratory procedures.

Lab automation projects have become cooperative activities between lab and IT groups. This is part of the evolution of lab systems.

Driven by the pressure to control costs while generating better quality data, automated, unattended, and reliable operation is what lab professionals are looking for from their instruments.

Nanotechnology is still early in its commercial development, but many scientists agree it could become a part of everyone’s daily life in the not-too-distant future.

Experimentation in microtiter plates exemplifies the two dominating trends in the life sciences: higher throughput and smaller sample size. Microplate handlers are the robotic glue that connects microplate readers, liquid dispensers, plate storage systems, plate washers, and other equipment essential for microplate-based research and development.

As more analytes are discovered, more tests are required per biological sample for drug discovery, research analysis and diagnostic testing. However, an unlimited amount of sample is never available.

The microplate has evolved over the past 60 years into an indispensable piece of equipment used in many labs today. Here, we share the results of our microplate technology survey.

Until the mid-1980s, purification of nucleic acids was traditionally performed by phenol-chloroform extraction and alcohol precipitation, which involved tedious manual tasks with toxic substances. This approach was soon replaced by the introduction of spin-column technology.

Marc Ferrer, Ph.D., Team Leader at the Chemical Genomics Center, which is part of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health discusses the need for automation in various laboratory settings.

By making the transition from a manual to an automated process, Syngenta Biotechnology Inc. gained more than they hoped for. The robotic solution automated a tedious manual process as well as allowed SBI scientists to extract more information from the data being collected.

We have moved past the point where general computer, word processing, and spreadsheet skills are a reasonable basis for competence in a modern laboratory.