2020
-
New Faculty Research Fund, NT$150,000, Office of Research and Development, National Cheng Kung University.
2020
-
New Faculty Research Fund, NT$150,000, Office of Research and Development, National Cheng Kung University.
GenTank
®
GenTank is a high-throughput water immersion-based thermocycler capable of the simultaneous processing of up to 20 microplates to perform large numbers of Polymerase Chain Reactions (PCRs). More than 30,000 reactions per run can be achieved via using 1536-well plates. GenTank is available for licensing.
®
1. Description
The system consists of the following: three water tanks; a temperature-control module that sets the water temperatures of the three tanks to the appropriate levels for the various steps of PCR (i.e. denaturing, annealing and primer extension); and a robotic module that transfers a basket of reaction plates from one tank to the next. The system is capable of simultaneously performing not only large-number (thousand-scale) amplifications but also large-volume (milliliter-scale) PCR amplifications.
2. Performance
PCRs on homemade polycarbonate 1536-well plates have shown that 1) reagent volume can be lower till 2 microliter and 2) no cross contamination is observed through fluorescent DNA microarray.
3.4"
4.9"
Linear amplification has been validated through 100 microliter to 1000 microliter using eppendorfs. DNA quantity is linearly correlated with PCR reagent volume (r=0.98).
3. Highlights of Design
The system is programmable via an input panel for customized PCR protocols.
Compatible with a variety of reagent vessels, for instance: 96-well, 384-well, 1536-well plates, tubes, ependorfs, etc., is shown in below table.
Numerous design of basket is available for different plates. Customized designed plate sealer is available for automatically sealing of plates.
Sealer
4. Implementation
GenTank has been integrated into a biomedical instrumentation system for high-throughput analysis of splicing events and the identification of transcript variants. (Nucleic Acids Research (2010) 38 (20):e187)
