In January 2024, Antonio Alcamí and Ángela Vázquez, virologists from the Severo Ochoa Centre for Molecular Biology, landed in Antarctica to study the avian flu virus. They embarked on a journey to monitor 17,000 penguins as part of their efforts to study the virus and prevent its spread. Our Maxwell® RSC 48 was delivered to extract nucleic acids from the samples, which are set to be analyzed using qPCR.
In an era where science moves at a rapid pace, integrating automation into your lab is not just beneficial but essential. When you automate your lab, you free up an invaluable resource: time. From scaling up operations and handling increased demand to improving consistency and reducing manual errors, automation can be the key to achieving higher throughput, saving costs, and—most importantly—enabling researchers to focus on the science rather than the process. However, embarking on a lab automation project requires careful planning, clear goals and an understanding of the intricacies involved in automating complex biological workflows.
Continue reading “Transform Your Research Lab with our Comprehensive Automation Resources”
Nucleic acid extraction is a time-consuming, resource-intensive process, but it doesn’t have to be. Automated systems are becoming more and more accessible and often can be operated with simple “plug and play” kits, freeing valuable resources
With these systems increasingly within reach, perhaps you’re thinking about introducing automated nucleic acid extraction into your lab. As you consider your options, here’s eight reasons why we think you should automate your nucleic extraction workflows.
In the fast-paced, competitive environment of research and technology development, efficiency is key to reaching project milestones and publishing your work. Managing your resources effectively–especially time–can help you reach those goals.
Time spent on manual nucleic acid extractions is time lost on parallel work, which cuts down productivity. Automation is not only often faster than manual preparations, but it also frees your team to do more valuable hands-on work.
As an example, the Maxwell® RSC cuts 40 minutes of hands-on-time per 16 samples. As the number of samples scales to 96 and beyond, liquid handlers like the Hamilton Star or Tecan Fluent can save many hours of hands-on-time per day.
Continue reading “Why Bring Automated Nucleic Acid Extraction into Your Lab?”This blog was written by guest writers Paraj Mandrekar (Technical Services Scientist 3) and Michelle Mandrekar, (Research Scientist 4).
Here are some designer’s notes comparing the Maxwell® RSC Blood DNA and the Maxwell® RSC simplyRNA kit chemistries for nucleic acid extraction.
The Maxwell RSC Blood DNA Kit and Maxwell RSC simplyRNA Blood Kit were both developed from the same non-silica-based purification chemistry and use the same underlying paramagnetic particle. This chemistry is characterized by an extreme binding capacity (the capacity of nucleic acid that can be bound on the particle), leading to both chemistries being capable of isolating large amounts of nucleic acid volumes and then eluting into relatively small volumes (50 µL). It is not unusual with either chemistry to have isolates that exceed 100 ng/µL. Although the chemistries have several similarities, there are some important distinctions between how the two chemistries were designed that influence which kit you choose for your nucleic acid extraction.
