Effective Pipetting for Bacteriocin Testing Workflows

Integra’s VOYAGER adjustable tip spacing pipette is streamlining workflows for researchers at NOMAD Bioscience GmbH, a German R&D company specialising in plant biotechnology, in the preparation and dispensing of media and gels.

Research scientist Birgit Koch explained how she uses the VOYAGER in her work: “My research is focused on molecular cloning, to generate plant virus-based expression vectors that are transferred using agrobacteria into the host plants, and activity testing of the antimicrobial bacteriocins produced via transient transformation. The preparation and dispensing of samples, media and gels are everyday tasks in the lab, and this is where we benefit from the VOYAGER.

“The VOYAGER’s ability to automatically adjust the tip spacing at the press of a button was our main reason for choosing it. The electronic pipette allows the NOMAD team to efficiently pipette volumes between 5 and 125 µl for up to eight channels simultaneously, reducing the number of transfer steps required. Antimicrobial activity testing is where the VOYAGER has helped the most, to decrease the transfer steps. We do a ‘spot-on-lawn’ assay where we pipette drops of our peptide solutions onto bacteria grown on agar gel in square petri dishes (12 x 12 cm) and, if the bacteria are killed, then we know our bacteriocins are active. We also do it the other way around, pipetting bacteria onto an agar containing the bacteriocin, to see whether or not they grow. I used to work a lot with manual single and multichannel pipettes, and it would take me 40 minutes to finish a plate for an activity assay. Now, with the VOYAGER, I’m done within 10 minutes.”

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