Echo® 525 Liquid Handler

Synthetic biology is driving a new era in sustainable science—enabling researchers to design microorganisms for the efficient production of environmentally friendly materials. Whether you're engineering microbial strains or optimizing growth conditions, minimizing waste and maximizing process efficiency are core goals of any green chemistry workflow.

Download this eBook to:

• Miniaturize and automate strain development — cut reagent use and reduce plastic waste
• Improve strain growth and optimization — minimize costly trial-and-error steps
• Speed up process development — reduce timelines without sacrificing data quality

Explore real-world case studies and practical tools that support sustainable innovation—from DNA purification to high-throughput bioprocessing. Learn how automation, precision liquid handling, and scalable workflows can help you bring green chemistry principles to life in your lab.

Resource details:

• Document type: SelectScience guide
• Page count: 91
• Read time: 2.5 hours
• Edition: 1st

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is a high-throughput DNA sequencing technology that enables rapid and cost-effective analysis of large amounts of genetic information. Unlike traditional Sanger sequencing, NGS allows for the simultaneous sequencing of millions of DNA fragments, providing a more comprehensive and detailed view of an organism’s genetic makeup.

Despite its many advantages, NGS workflows also face several challenges, which can affect the quality and reliability of the generated data. Automated sequencing preparation can help solve several challenges in the NGS workflow by streamlining and standardizing the sample preparation process, reducing manual processing errors, and increasing efficiency. This eBook provides an informative guide on how automated solutions can be leveraged to optimize your NGS workflows for the following fields:

• Whole genome sequencing
• Metagenomics
• Transcriptomics
• Targeted capture and enrichment
• Exome sequencing
• Single-cell sequencing

In this application note, Beckman Coulter Life Sciences shows how its flexible solutions can automate your liquid handling at any volume and throughput.

In the context of biopharmaceuticals such as vaccines, recombinant proteins, and revolutionary gene and antibody therapies, cell line development (CLD) is the process by which host cell machinery is leveraged through the generation of biologic-producing cell lines to manufacture crucial components. However, the process of producing a desired lineage is often a long and arduous process, with numerous steps and challenges.

This dedicated guide takes a detailed, application-based look at automated cell line development innovations and workflows with the aim of addressing these challenges, spanning the entire biologics pipeline from cell line engineering and selection, to characterization and process development.

Download to explore content including:

• An introduction to accelerated workflows
• Optimization of transfection conditions
• Efficient cell line development with enrichment
• Limiting dilution for monoclonality
• Automating data handling
• Ensuring data integrity for hit picking
• Applied automated workflows

This application note describes studies that combined the NEB NEBuilder® HiFi DNA Assembly Cloning Kit with the Labcyte® Echo® 525 Liquid Handler to generate DNA constructs using various assembly chemistries. Through use of a minimized protocol, the Echo Liquid Handler enables lower-cost methods and more efficient workflows.

In this study, NEBuilder® HiFi was combined with the 25 nL increment dispensing Labcyte Echo® 525 Liquid Handler to assemble a modular oncogene construct encoding phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate 3-kinase catalytic subunit alpha (PIK3CA) over five modular pieces. The goal of this experiment was to utilize the Echo 525 Liquid Handler in assembling five, five-piece assemblies by substituting modular DNA pieces at the nanoliter scale. The Labcyte Echo Liquid Handler enables lower-cost methods and workflows to produce high-quality synthetic DNA constructs which expands design-based testing with higher throughput and affords the scientist a broader biological landscape to interrogate.

In this technical note, the utility of the Labcyte Echo Liquid Handler to accurately dispense a variety of cell lines to ensure uniformity and viability for cell-based applications is demonstrated. The addition of Histodenz™ maintained the cells in suspension in the source plate to provide a stable and homogeneous cell solution through the dispense step. The Labcyte Echo Liquid Handler provides high-quality cell dispensing and provides a robust, automated solution for situations in which biological material is limited or non-contact cell dispensing is required.

Serial microsampling of animals reduces the overall number of animals sampled and euthanized for toxicology studies. Traditional composite studies in mice can require up to 700 μL of blood for each time point in a pharmacokinetic study. A draw of 700 μL from a mouse would require the animal to be euthanized and often require the use of addition “satellite” animals to complete the study. Thus, in a 9-point time course analysis of mouse plasma, nine mice would be sacrificed. In response to programs like the EU 3Rs initiative to reduce the use of animals in research researchers have turned to microsampling as an alternative to composite studies. With advances in bioanalytical techniques drug levels can be determined from samples of 20 μL or less. This small sample volume or microsample enables reduces the dependency on satellite animals to complete a study. Additionally, microsampling is faster and less stressful than traditional composite studies.

As the cost of sequencing has continued to decline by orders of magnitude in the past ten years, scientists are enabled to ask deeper and more complex questions about transcriptomics. Consequently, the variety, quantity, and demands of RNA sequencing experiments have all increased. The Clontech SMART-Seq® v4 Ultra® Low Input RNA Kit incorporates the SMART (Switching Mechanism at 5’ End of RNA Template) technology. This technology utilizes the template switching activity of reverse transcriptases to add PCR adapters directly to both the 5’ and 3’ ends of the first-strand cDNA before amplification using LD PCR. Here, we document information and results pertaining to the miniaturization of this process utilizing the Echo® 525 Liquid Handler, effectively reducing the reagent cost and processing time for the workflow, addressing current throughput needs of RNA sequencing.

A workflow utilizing the Labcyte® Echo® 525 Liquid Handler can provide the solution to cost-effectively scale whole genome sequencing (WGS) of microbiomes to meet the demands of this new era of microbiome research. This application note demonstrates how the Echo 525 Liquid Handler can be used to miniaturize WGS of microbial communities. Raw data can be processed, analyzed, and ready for interpretation within the hour, by utilizing CosmosID’s best-in-class microbiome bioinformatics platform.

Evosep and Beckman Coulter Life Sciences have partnered to automate sample preparation workflows utilizing the unique analytical properties of the Evotip Pure to facilitate end-to-end workflows for proteomics applications and LC-MS analysis using the Evosep One.

The Evosep One is designed for high-throughput and high-volume applications, where standardized methods with increasing robustness enable routine analysis of hundreds of samples per instrument per day. This has moved the bottleneck towards sample preparation, which requires standardized and fully automated end-to-end workflows.

The integration of the Biomek i-Series workstation with Evosep technology offers a robust and scalable solution for high-throughput sample preparation for proteomics.

This is illustrated by fully automated sample loading on the Evotip integrated with digestion workflows for both cell lysates and plasma. By combining cutting-edge technologies in automation with liquid chromatography, these workflows address the growing demand for standardized and scalable proteomics solutions.

Key learning objectives:

• Explore how the Evotip Pure can be seamlessly integrated into LC-MS workflows
• Learn how to setup the Biomek i-Series for proteomics
• Discover how standard proteomics workflows can be automated and cost-efficient for scalability

Who should attend?

• Researchers from the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, as well as academia, who have an interest in proteomics and multiomics.
• Scientists and end users of all skill levels who are currently conducting or wish to conduct proteomic sample preparation.
• Scientists and end users seeking a standardized solution to the challenges of proteomic sample preparation.

Certificate of attendance

All webinar participants can request a certificate of attendance, including a learning outcomes summary, for continuing education purposes.

Dr Linda D'Amore, Operational Manager at the GeneMill Foundry at the University of Liverpool, discusses the challenges and advantages of workflow miniaturization for synthetic biology processes.

Dr Paolo Piazza, Section Leader: Library Prep and Process Improvement at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, UK, describes the technologies meeting the automation needs of a high throughput genomics facility.

Dr Paolo Piazza, Section Leader for Library Prep and Process Development at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, UK, explains how automated liquid handling & miniaturization technology has optimized high throughput sequencing and facilitated the development of new and custom workflows at the centre.

Dr Robert Bowers, a Research Scientist at the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, explains how automated processes are facilitating single cell genomics research for bioenergy, carbon cycling and biogeochamical applications.

Dr Stephan Lorenz, Head of the Single Cell Genomics Core Facility at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, describes how implementation of acoustic liquid dispensing can facilitate high throughput single cell sequencing workflows.

Dr Patrick Cai, Co-director of the Edinburgh Genome Foundry, discusses how acoustic dispensing has facilitated DNA synthesis and assembly, chromosome wide genotyping, DNA origami self-assembly investigation and even some bio-art.

Dr Chris Bakal, Team Leader at The Institute of Cancer Research, UK, discusses his research on cancer cell proliferation and signaling and how the lab utilizes automation technology for miniaturization and high throughput screening of complex cell assays.

Dr Andy Breakspear, research assistant at John Innes Centre, UK, explains how large-scale construct assembly is accelerating his synthetic biology research, into the development of crops with increased sustainably.

Dr Chris Bakal, Team Leader at The Institute of Cancer Research, UK, describes the benefits of high content screening for phenotypic profiling.

Discover how Beckman Coulter Life Sciences is advancing synthetic biology research to tackle the challenges of our growing population

In this SelectScience special feature, learn about the latest in next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies and techniques

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Expanding environmental microbial phylogeny with single cell genomics and metagenomics

Discover how this leading London Biomedical Research Center is using state-of-the-art genomics to improve healthcare

Adapting platform technologies to push the boundaries of experimental design

Take a tour through the Crop Engineering Consortium’s high-throughput pipeline for creating nitrogen-fixing cereal crops