Agriculture, Veterinary and Food - Download

Think your workflows are too diverse to be automated?

Faced with analyzing an enormous variety of samples – from raw materials to dairy products to processed foods – with an equally diverse array of methods, today’s laboratories need flexible automation solutions that not only meet current testing demands but also have the capability to evolve in response to future needs. Whatever the application – chemical analysis, microbiology, molecular biology or mass spectrometry – Tecan has a solution to meet the requirements of your workflow.

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Freedom EVO® platform with Pickolo™ colony-picker for biofuel production
 

Introduction
Abengoa Bioenergy New Technologies, based in Seville, Spain, is an international company applying innovative solutions for biofuel production. In this context, the Company was seeking to establish and automate a screening process to determine cellulase activity in mutant strains of cellulaseproducing fungi.

Since manual screening processes are very costly and time consuming, automation was a prerequisite for a project of this magnitude. Abengoa established close collaborations with Biomar Microbial Technologies and Mejoran Lab Automation to create the optimal solution. Biomar, located in León, Spain, is a pioneer in research into micro¬biological applications to generate sustainable solutions in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture and renewable energy, and therefore has a solid background in generation, screening and bioactivity profiling of microbial collections. Mejoran, based in Madrid, Spain, is a laboratory automation solution provider.

The first step in the three-stage screening process was selection of colonies of different fungal mutants and their transfer to a 96-well plate to create microinocula for  further fermentation. The second step involved fermentation of the different mutants in a 96-well plate format. Finally, the cellulase-producing capability of the different mutants  was evaluated.
 

A Freedom EVO 150 workstation with SciRobotics’ Pickolo colony-picker module proved the ideal solution for performing both the fungal selection and the subsequent screening of different culture conditions. The Freedom EVO workstation can easily identify, select and pick fungal colonies based on user-selected criteria. Additionally, Freedom  EVOware® and the Pickolo software allowed Mejoran to define a unique picking procedure that achieved 100 % microinoculum growth for subsequent experiments. This was accomplished by picking from the perimeter of the fungal colonies, rather than from the center, in a sweeping motion which optimized the amount of biomass taken up by the tip.

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Processing time is about 1.5 h for 24 samples from up to 400 mg of plant starting material. The A260/280 ratio as a typical indicator of nucleic acid purity is generally in the range of 1.9 and typical yields are approximately 80 μg per 200 mg of starting material from fresh wheat leaves. Hence, full automation of the nucleic acid extraction procedure on a Tecan Freedom EVO workstation streamlines laboratories’ workflows and allows for reliable and fast extraction of high quality plant genomic DNA.

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Rapid extraction of genomic DNA from a variety of food and feed samples with NucleoSpin® 8/96 Food columns and the Freedom EVO®

Vet Food Agro Diagnostics Sdn Bhd (VFAD) is a service laboratory based in Malaysia, which provides a wide range of screening and testing services to the veterinary, food, agriculture and agro-based industries across Southeast Asia. VFAD works very closely with local government authorities, such as the Malaysian Department of Veterinary Services (DVS), on the control and prevention of infectious animal diseases, as well as a variety of food safety programs. This work has led to numerous awards and recognitions, as well as development of a number of patent-pending inventions.

The Landeslabor Berlin-Brandenburg (LLBB, State Laboratory of Berlin-Brandenburg) in Frankfurt/Oder, Germany, is an investigative institution dedicated to the protection of human and animal health, as well as of the environment and natural resources. The LLBB has been established in January 2009 to combine the laboratory resources of the states of Berlin and Brandenburg.

First described in the US in 1987, Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) is a viral swine disease that causes a range of reproductive and respiratory disorders. The major component of the PRRS is reproductive failure, causing premature births, late-term abortions and stillbirths, weak piglets, decreased farrowing rates and delayed return to estrus, with the consequence of significantly reduced production rates. Respiratory problems often lead to secondary infections, and cause increased mortality in young piglets.

Avian influenza is a bird disease caused by the highly pathogenic influenza virus. Influenza viruses are inherently unstable and, as they lack a genetic proof-reading mechanism, small errors that occur when the virus copies itself go undetected and uncorrected. Specific mutations and evolution in influenza viruses cannot be predicted, making it difficult if not impossible to know if or when a virus such as H5N1 might acquire the properties needed to spread easily and sustainably among humans. This difficulty is increased by the present lack of understanding which specific mutations would lead to increased transmissibility of the virus among humans (www.who.int). Here we describe an automated method for nucleic acid extraction and avian influenza diagnosis.