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      Liquid Handling - Empowering scientists in the genomic revolution

      09/06/2023

      Genomics Liquid Handling
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      The field of genomics has witnessed a revolutionary transformation, leading to a better understanding of health and disease, as well the emergence of personalized medicine to improve therapeutic outcomes. One of the key technologies driving this transformation has been Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), which has allowed scientists and researchers to obtain sequencing data at a much higher scale and lower cost than ever before.

      Library preparation & NGS sample preparation

      Library preparation is an integral step in the NGS sample preparation workflow to ensure accurate sequencing results. However, manual NGS library preparation has long been a bottleneck in the workflow. It is a time-consuming and labour-intensive process involving many highly repetitive pipetting and incubation steps at the bench. The advent of automated liquid handling technology has opened the possibility to drastically streamline NGS library preparation, enabling scientists to improve both the quality and quantity of output data.

      However, with so many individual processes involved in NGS library preparation, you might think that automating this workflow requires several instruments costing large amounts of laboratory space.

      Enter firefly®

       

       

      Streamline your NGS library preparation with firefly

      firefly is our dedicated all-in-one automated liquid handler for NGS library preparation. By combining multiple technologies for pipetting, dispensing, incubating and shaking within a single compact design, firefly ensures that you don’t need to sacrifice precious laboratory footprint to see good results. Using our innovative true positive displacement technology, firefly is fully compatible with all molecular biology reagents, viscous and volatile, as well as bead suspension, making it an ideal solution for genomics workflows.

      What benefits can you expect to see from making the switch to automated liquid handling with firefly?

      firefly automates the repetitive tasks involved in library preparation, significantly reducing the hands-on time and effort required. By eliminating manual pipetting and mixing steps, scientists can focus more on other critical (and often more interesting) aspects of work, such as experiment design or data analysis.

      Manual library preparation is prone to variations caused by human error, which gets more likely as scientists become more fatigued at the bench. By standardizing all protocols with firefly, you can drastically lessen the risk of human error, and ensure the quality of your output data. Saved protocols can be shared instantly via the cloud to any user, so your data isn’t compromised even when projects are split across multiple sites or locations.

      Automating the tedious pipetting motion alleviates the risk of repetitive strain injury (RSI) for scientists and technicians, as well as minimizes any necessary contact with harmful samples or reagents.

      Automated systems scale down reaction volumes without compromising data accuracy, meaning that laboratories can generate even more data from their budget, extending the use of precious samples and reagents.

      While miniaturization cuts down on reagent and sample volume for each experiment, firefly’s innovative non-contact reagent dispensing technology lower requirements for a single-use consumables, both in terms of storage and usage. This further translates to reduced amount of plastic waste.

      Case study: Fast & reliable automation of the NEBNext Ultra II FS DNA library prep kit for Illumina with firefly

      Automation of NGS library preparation using firefly has been validated using the NEBNext Ultra II FS DNA library prep kit for Illumina, where the resulting libraries were shown consistent in concentration and fragment size distribution, with no cross-contamination between wells.

      Do you want to see the new era of NGS library preparation?

      Automation of NGS library preparation is a game changer for scientists worldwide. firefly delivers a robust, user-friendly and space-economical solution to overcome the productivity challenges associated with manual library preparation, so you can unlock the full potential of NGS and drive transformative discoveries to shape the future of biology and medicine.