Applications for Open Source Microplate-Compatible Illumination Panels

Summary

Microplate Assistive Pipetting Light Emitter (M.A.P.L.E.) is a computer-driven device that systematically illuminates microtiter wells to provide guidance for the manual preparation of microplates.  M.A.P.L.E. improves the accuracy of microplate preparation while automating data recordkeeping.  In addition, it can assist with examining microplate quality or aid in the detection of errors.   

Abstract

Microplates are commonly used in the modern laboratory environment for a wide variety of tasks both in small-scale laboratory benchtop operations as well as large-scale high-throughput screening (HTS) campaigns. Though laboratory automation has greatly increased the utility of microplates there remain instances where automation-based instrumentation is not feasible, cost-effective or compatible with microplate formatting needs. In these cases, microplates must be manually prepared. Problematic to manual microplate manipulations is that a number of difficulties can arise pertaining to the accurate tracking of sample operations, data record keeping and quality control (QC) inspection for well artifacts or formatting errors. As microplate well densities increase (i.e., 96-well, 384-well, 1536-well) the potential for introducing errors also drastically increases.  Moreover, for small bench-top laboratory operations there exists a need to improve the ease and accuracy of sample handling in a cost-effective fashion. Herein, we describe a system that acts as a semi-automated pipetting guide referred to as the Microplate Assistive Pipetting Light Emitter (M.A.P.L.E.).  M.A.P.L.E. has multiple uses for supporting compound hit-picking and microplate preparation for assay development in high-throughput screening or laboratory benchtop operations, as well as QC/quality assurance (QA) diagnostic evaluation of microplate quality or visualizing well formatting errors.

Introduction

As recently published¹, the Lead Identification laboratory at Scripps Research² has developed and released an open-source illumination panel for microplate preparation referred to as the Microplate Assistive Pipetting Light Emitter (M.A.P.L.E.). Manual preparation of microplates, whether they are made for compound management or bio-assay needs, can be prone to human errors that drastically increase as well density of the microplate increases. In addition, proper recordkeeping and data-logging of microplate content/format is also prone to manual entry errors. In high throughput screening (HTS) automation facilities these ....

Protocol

1. Semiautomated "plate to plate" sample transfer preparation

1. Generate a CSV file as shown in Figure 1 containing source and destination plates using a spreadsheet editing application. The CSV file that is generated must have the following header columns in the order listed: Source_barcode; Destination_barcode; Source_well; Dest_well; Transfer_volume.   
2. Under the header columns, make sure to include one row in the CSV file for each desired pipetting o.......

Discussion

By releasing M.A.P.L.E. as an open-source platform, we have introduced a laboratory tool that provides utility, but can also be easily extended to meet the evolving needs of the end user. Benchtop microplate sample preparation is a common task that is performed in a wide variety of laboratory environments and this task can be demonstrably improved with a technology such as M.A.P.L.E.

The M.A.P.L.E. platform has been specifically engineered with adaptability to future applications in mind. Each.......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
96 or 384 well microplate			https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplate
Microplate Assistive Pipetting Light Emitter	Open source		https://github.com/pierrebaillargeon/Microplate-Assistive-Pipetting-Light-Emitter
Pipettor			https://www.jove.com/science-education/5033/an-introduction-to-the-micropipettor
Spectrometer	Ocean Optics	USB-650 Red Tide