by Emmanuel Varesio, Sandra Jahn, Sandrine Cudré, Gérard Hopfgartner, Renzo Picenoni and Guenter Boehm
Smart Sample Prep in AL
As laboratories continue to be asked to increase productivity and the analysis power that is available with advanced chromatography systems continues to grow, the focus for many scientists is firmly back on sample preparation. Estimates suggest that as much of 60% of analysis time is spent on sample preparation. In addition, poor sample prep can intro- duce significant error into an analysis, perhaps as much as 30% of total experimental error.
Automation has long been a route to streamline workflows in chromatog- raphy, but many scientists adopt one of two processes: robotic sample preparation or automated sample injection. Sample preparation, and its associated chemistry, is typically done off-line, often with a robot add- ing reagents and making dilutions. Following this, samples are manually transferred to a second, separate device that automatically manages the injection of samples into a chromatography system. Although both systems can be independently classified as “automated,” the process still requires a manual step to transfer the samples. Furthermore, protocols
Chromatography: An Automated Liquid–Liquid Extraction Technique for Metabolomics Analysis
often have additional manual steps in between. There is no robotic con- nection between sample preparation and the analyzer injection system.
This article describes an alternative approach in which the entire sample preparation and injection process is automated within one integrated robotic system. Results are presented from a metabolomics study using an automated Bligh and Dyer technique (a type of liquid–liquid extrac- tion) on a PAL RTC platform (CTC Analytics, Zwingen, Switzerland) for the extraction of metabolites from an algae cell culture.
Figure 1 – Annotated image of PAL RTC platform. AMERICAN LABORATORY 28
Figure 2 – Instrumentation and software setup. MARCH 2016
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