Comparison of Automation Equipment in High Throughput Screening

This report compares several types of liquid handling equipment presently used in HTS. The devices include 96-well automated pipettors such as the Carl Creative PlateTrac™ (Harbor City, CA), Matrix PlateMate™ (Hudson, NH), Tomtec Quadra-96T? (Hamden, CT) and a Zymark RapidPlate-96™ (Hopkinton, MA) integrated into a full robotic system. A general set of considerations including ease of programming, assay-completion time, accuracy and precision of liquid dispensing, and low-volume pipetting were evaluated. Both a protease screen and a cell-based reporter gene assay were used as model systems for comparison. The data indicate that the Carl Creative PlateTrac has an advantage in several areas. These include the ease in programming, reduction in assay run time, and increased accuracy and precision in liquid dispensing, especially for volumes of 1 μl or less. However, both the Matrix Platemate and Zymark robotic systems may be used to perform complicated multi-step tasks involving multidirectional plate transfer, which is not possible on the current PlateTrac. Advantages and limitations of each piece of equipment are discussed further in this report.