Pipettes and Serial Dilutions Have Dramatic Negative Effects on Biological Assays

Liquid handling and dilution processes profoundly influence estimates of biological activity. This study compared tip-based serial dilution and dispensing versus acoustic dispensing with direct dilution. Published data show results differ by orders of magnitude with no correlation or ranking of datasets. In short, tip-based dispensing processes are an important source of error in high-throughput screening. These findings have far-reaching implications in biological research.