Learn how to Automate Nucleic Acid Extraction
In this forum, you will learn about:
- Principles of Nucleic acid extraction using magnetic particles and liquid handling robots
- The foundational work you need before building a method
- How to build and troubleshoot an automated nucleic acid extraction workflow
Summary
Automating your nucleic acid extraction workflows can enable higher throughput, improve precision, reduce labor, etc. However, developing the methods on highly flexible and sophisticated liquid handling platforms such as the Hamilton, Tecan, Beckman Coulter etc. is non-trivial and requires an understanding of the robotics, the biological sample, the extraction chemistry, and the quality requirements of the downstream application to assess the performance of the workflow. Developing workflows for the first time can take months depending on one’s experience and often problems can linger leading to difficulties for years if the method was not optimized. Learn more about how to efficiently automate your nucleic acid extraction workflow and ask our panel of experts all the challenging questions you have.
Panel of Experts
Rick Grygiel
Supervisor, Field Support Scientists
Rick Grygiel joined Promega in 2018. He is the Supervisor, Field Support Scientists for North America. He and his team support the implementation of Promega chemistries on laboratory high throughput automation (Hamilton, Tecan, Beckman, ThermoFisher and other instrumentation). Their support combines chemistry and instrumentation expertise to provide customers with tailored automation solutions, training, and support. This enables customers to implement Promega chemistries more rapidly without being chemistry or instrument experts themselves.
Rick joined Promega after spending over 17 years with a molecular diagnostics company, the latter 15 years as a Field Automation & Applications Scientist. During this time, he helped over 100 laboratories automate their nucleic acid purification and molecular testing workflows on various platforms. In addition, he was instrumental in the successful development and launch of several Class I and Class III medical devices. Rick has a degree in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Sarah Teter, PhD
Senior Applications Scientist
Kirk Hetzel
Field Support Scientist
Kirk Hetzel is a Field Support Scientist with Promega Corporation. His main role is to utilize a diversity of automated high throughput platforms (Tecan, Hamilton, Beckman, ThermoFisher and other instrumentation) to create and develop custom automated scripts using Promega reagents (nucleic acid and protein purification and cell-based assay workflows) in customer laboratories, or internally, as a technical product expert for reagent and instrument applications. He has background in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse.
Kirk went on to work in the diagnostic market at Abbot and Beckman Coulter as a technical support scientist. Kirk supported the manufacture of FDA regulated IVD devices performing failure investigations, process improvements, and process and test method validations. Kirk then moved to Beckman Coulter Lifesciences as a Field Application Specialist training customers on the Biomek liquid handling systems and implementing custom solutions for a variety of life science solutions.