4titude’s® 4LAB™ is an automated, high-precision pipetting system specifically designed for low-volume liquid handling. It comes as a one channel or 8channel small footprint system.  It has been specifically designed for pipetting low volume assays with high precision in molecular biology and assay screening.   It is available as a 4-position and a 6-position workstation. A wide variety of adapters for every kind of consumable, both SBS Format plates, strips and single tubes, are available both actively cooled or non-cooled, allowing free configuration of the robot deck.

The instrument features a UV resistant housing and can also be supplied with HEPA cleanroom filters and inside UV lamp for sterilization. The housing can be removed to integrate the instrument into larger units using the SiLA drivers available, and also to integrate it in larger cleanbench setups for pipetting cell assays.

As it currently is the cheapest compact single and 8channel pipetting unit in the market, it is especially suitable as the core pipetting unit of dedicated systems integrated by using SiLA standards, showing the  power of a plug- and-play software standard. The versatility of this approach can be seen in the following application note: http://www.4ti.co.uk/files/9513/7449/4786/Modular_Detection_System.pdf, showing the potential of dedicated combinations of instruments to give a freely configured detection system from off-the-shelf components.

 

EASY AND CONVENIENT TO USE

• PC software can be mastered in an hour.
• No trained technician required.
• Built-in set-up protocols can be quqickly modified and transferred via USB memory stick.
• Single and 8-channel, 50µl or 200µl automated pipetting modules can be changed without tools.
• 4 interchangeable standard microplate / tip rack adapters and 2 interchangeable reagent vessel adapters available.
• Other applications include sequencing set-up, HLA typing and SNP detection, etc.

 

AFFORDABLE SOLUTION

• The most affordable automated pipetting system available.
• Uses tips that are compatible with Beckman® Biomek® NX, FX & 3000.
• Cooling block adapters keep sensitive reagents / samples at 7°C for over an hour.
• Save reagent costs by human error reduction and using low volume PCR plates.

 

EASY TO SERVICE

• The automated pipetting modules are simple to remove and can be returned for service and calibration.
• PC software is upgraded via the internet.
• The entire system is compact and light-weight.

 

ACCURATE AND PRECISE

• Each automated pipetting module is calibrated to ISO-8655 standards.
• Excellent results for qPCR standard curve and replicates (Figure 1).
• Better Precision of pipetting results than manual pipetting (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Excellent Serial Dilution Results

7µl NIH3T3 Cell cDNA sample is diluted in 21µl water at 1:4 ratio for 4 times. Roche® LightCycler® 480 real-time thermal cycler and Finnzyme DyNAmo® Flash SYBR® Green qPCR kit (F-415L) were used.

Figure 2: Better Precision Results than Manual Pipetting

Target: Human GAPDH (top curve) was amplified in replicates of 4. 18µl (master-mix) and 2µl (cDNA) were pipetted into 20µl reaction volume. Roche  LightCycler 480 real-time thermal cycler and Invitrogen   Platinum Taq DNA Ploymerase were used.

 

PERFORMANCE

 

50µl Tip on single or 8-channel pipetting module

	1µl	50µl
Accuracy (Rel.)	±7%	±1%
Precision (Rel. CV)	≤ 7.5%	≤ 0.4%

 

200µl Tip on single or 8-channel pipetting module

	10µl	200µl
Accuracy (Rel.)	±3%	±0.8%
Precision (Rel. CV)	≤ 1%	≤ 0.15%

 

Note: According to ISO-8655 standards (Gravimetric method), APM is calibrated in temperature (21-25°C, ±0.5°C) and humidity (60-90%) controlled environment. Twice-distilled water, robotic tips and microbalance were used.