Ensuring precision and high throughput in DNA extraction

Festo has developed a handling system for use in the oKtopureTM DNA extraction robot from LGC. The fully-automatic robot has been developed for plant and animal breeders, and molecular biologists that often face technical challenges when analysing DNA.

The oKtopure robot is designed to speed up breeding programmes and other molecular biological analyses. The robot is claimed to purify 8 x 96 Deepwell plates in parallel, enabling up to 5,000 samples to be extracted in eight hours.

The solution provided by Festo is a three-dimensional gantry handling system that is said to meet the levels of precision required.Liquid handling is made possible by the EGC electric toothed belt axes on the X- and Y-axes, while the double Z-axis, EGSK, with spindle drive, ensures exact positioning of the dispensing head.

The oKtopure robot utilises the sbeadexTM extraction chemistry developed by LGC, which is based on the use of magnetic particles. These particles are said to specifically bind nucleic acids such as DNA and allows the separation of DNA from other contaminants.