Agilent Automation has posted a recorded webinar to its website that enables scientists to learn techniques for introducing reliable automation into small- and large-scale PCR applications.
These can range from single cells to core laboratory applications and can minimise the potential for introduction of errors into the PCR process.
PCR remains one of the most widely used techniques in molecular biology for tumour characterisation, pathogen identification, detection of genetic diseases and/or susceptibility, and, potentially, to predict drug responses.
While PCR provides a fast, inexpensive and simple means of producing relatively large numbers of DNA or RNA copies from small quantities of source material for closed-tube analysis as well as for sequencing, it also involves a time- and labour-intensive process that can be susceptible to variations in technique and timing.
The webinar features viewpoints expressed by experts in the field, who share examples from their laboratories on 'How to Successfully Scale PCR Workflows from Benchtop to Automation'.
The webinar features presentations from the Quantitative Genomics Laboratory at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center, the Laboratory of Molecular Medicine and Global Health, Brandeis University, and Agilent Automation.
It provides guidelines on when to consider moving to a liquid-handling robot; what constitutes good practice for using a robot; robot use for precision pipetting for qPCR applications; scaling up from a lab bench to an automated system; setting up automated qPCR assays on 96- and 384-well plates; and the benefits of using Late-PCR on the single-cell scale.
