Adapter Plate Concept Provides Ultimate Flexibility

The flexibility offered by Tecan’s MultiChannel Arm™ (MCA) 384 and Freedom EVO® liquid handling platform is vital to researchers in the Biology Department at the University of Konstanz, Germany, helping them to develop novel molecular tools for the investigation of cellular processes.Professor Thomas U Mayer explained: “We are investigating how small molecules affect protein activity, and how they may be used to activate or deactivate this activity during mitosis in living cells.

We perform a variety of protein- and cell-based assays, using fluorescence-based techniques to follow the process of interest, and depend on a Freedom EVO platform equipped with the versatile MCA 384 option to reproducibly perform these screens.

“We mainly work in 384-well format, but we also use 96-well plates for RNAi–based screens, and so wanted a highly flexible system, which could perform various assays as required. The MCA 384’s adapter plate concept allows us to automatically switch between 384- and 96-well pipetting, as well as use our existing 384-well pin tool for very low volume liquid transfers.

“This enables us to use a single workstation to perform a wide range of tasks, which is very important in academia, and we have been very happy with the system’s performance”