At Yellowstone, Artel will test how pipetting liquids at a temperature different than the pipette (thermal disequilibrium) affects delivered volume and data accuracy and precision
Artel announces that Yellowstone National Park, USA, has been selected as the location for the second mission of its Extreme Pipetting Expedition.
While today's laboratories are usually temperature-controlled, it is very common to handle liquids that are extremely hot or cold.
For example, restriction enzymes used in nucleic acid work are frequently handled at ice temperature (0C), and higher temperatures are encountered with handling mammalian cell cultures (37C) or polymerase chain reaction (PCR) solutions (60C or higher).
Because pipettes deliver different volumes when fluids are at different temperatures, laboratories need to account for the resulting volume variation.
To draw attention to the importance of considering temperature disequilibrium in clinical testing, and help laboratories develop strategies to overcome this effect, Artel will release the results from this latest mission at the 2007 AACC Annual Meeting and Clinical Lab Expo, San Diego, 15-19 July 2007.
At AACC, Artel will also hold the Pipetting Olympics to reward laboratorians for superior pipetting skills, a major factor in data accuracy and precision.
The competition will, for the first time, include multichannel pipetting competitions.
Yellowstone was selected as the site for this mission because it is emblematic of thermal variation.
The active geothermal features at Yellowstone include hundreds of geysers, steam vents and hot springs, all set in an alpine environment where air temperatures of -45C have been recorded.
Water and steam temperatures in Yellowstone range from below freezing to nearly 140C.
In addition to the well-known Old Faithful geyser, Yellowstone is also the natural home of Thermus aquaticus (the source of Taq DNA Polymerase), which was first isolated from the park's Fountain Geyser region.
The Extreme Pipetting Expedition is a multi-phase, year-long scientific study to illustrate the impact of laboratory conditions on data integrity.
