A turnkey digital system for precise and consistent pipetting: Your questions answered

Choosing the correct pipetting technique helps with securing the accuracy and precision necessary for reproducible, reliable results. Especially when pipetting small volumes the influence of the pipetting technique can have tremendous effects on the experimental result.

Watch this on-demand SelectScience® webinar with Steve DeCabooter (Gilson) and Dr. Andreas Hecker (QIAGEN) to learn about the unique combination of Gilson’s TRACKMAN^® Connected and QIAGEN nucleic acid isolation kits and how this refines pipetting accuracy and promotes traceability, resulting in consistent, precise, and reproducible results. Learn how to benefit from this innovation in your daily laboratory routines.

Read on for highlights from the Q&A discussion and register now to watch the webinar on-demand

Is TRACKMAN^® Connected limited to sample preparation or are there other use cases?

SDC: TRACKMAN^® Connected is a general-purpose benchtop tool. We've put a lot of our focus into helping to automate the pipetting work on your bench, as you see with the QIAGEN protocols as well. We've got the ability to add in other aspects of the workflow as well.

It looks like one aim is to standardize sample preparation procedures. To what extent can I modify QIAGEN protocols to adjust them to my needs?

AH: That is an excellent question. it's definitely the aim to standardize, but this doesn't mean that there is no freedom to adjust things. When you set up the experiment, you can define whether you want to perform additional steps such as DNA treatment, or whether you want to skip those. You can freely, or more or less freely, choose the elution volume, given a certain range that we find is optimal for the selected protocol. In the end, you can also modify things like washing steps, or in other words, the volume of wash buffer. This is something that we don't proactively want customers to do because, in the end, one of the aims of this system is to standardize. This does not only support the idea that the procedures are always the same and comparable in between researchers but also guarantees that each customer uses the best protocol to get ideal results. It's a type of trade-off, but there is certain flexibility.

Where could someone acquire a demo? And how would they go about ordering the product?

SDC: : We support through the website, gilson.com/gilson-connect/qiagen. From there, we've got all the instructions that you need to be able to work through, whether it's ordering the products or requesting a demo. To order the products, it's a two-step process. The first step is for you to work with QIAGEN to purchase the kits that you're looking for. And then the second is to work with Gilson to then purchase a corresponding TRACKMAN® Connected bundle that's already been preconfigured to work with those kits.

Is there a plan to add more QIAGEN kits to TRACKMAN that are not ready on the tablet?

AH: It's quite obvious that with eight kits that we have now available we cant cover everything, even though these 8 Kits cover almost all major applications. It's challenging to add all the QIAGEN products simply because our portfolio is that large. But to keep it short, yes, there are plans to enhance our offer and we will very carefully look into what protocols are suitable, which protocols are requested, and then add new functionalities and protocols to the system. What we’ve put together here is just the starting point.

To learn more about precise and consistent pipetting, watch the full webinar here>>

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