Technology
TTP LabTech’s mosquito liquid handler offers precise pipetting of compounds, proteins or solvents on a nanolitre scale for easy assay miniaturisation. At the core of mosquito is a continuous reel of disposable micropipettes which can aspirate, dispense and mix samples.
Positive displacement pipetting offers huge advantages for accurate and precise nanolitre liquid handling. Each mosquito micropipette uses its own stainless steel piston and not an air gap or system liquid, so solutions are aspirated and dispensed accurately with no dead volumes, no matter what the liquid type, viscosity, surface tension or environmental conditions.
Solution Volume CVs
| Solution | Volume | CVs |
| 0.2M ammonium acetate 0.1M sodium citrate pH 5.5 w/v PEG 4,000 | 100nL | 2.80% |
| 0.2M magnesium chloride 0.1M Hepes pH 7.5 30% v/v isopropanol | 100nL | 5.50% |
| 0.5M lithium sulphate 10% w/v PEG 20,000 | 100nL | 2.20% |
| 2% Dioxine 0.1M Bicine pH 9.0 10% w/v PEG 20,000 | 100nL | 3.33% |
| 0.1M Hepes pH7.5 70% v/v MPD | 100nL | 2.89% |
| 30% PEG 8,000 tris pH 7.0 10mM | 100nL | 3.28% |
| 40% PEG 20,000 tris pH 7.1 96mM | 100nL | 5.57% |
| 100% DMSO | 100nL | 3.94% |
mosquito’s low cost micropipettes are disposable, which guarantees zero cross-contamination between samples. It also removes the need for time-consuming wash steps or replacing costly, fragile, fixed-tip dispenser heads. The micropipettes' small size allows them to access all samples in a well – leaving minimal (<1uL) hold up volume in the source plate and no in-tip dead volume. So you keep all the savings from an efficient set-up process. The pipettes are strong enough to pierce foil and plastic plate seals as well as 384-well format 'mini-tube' caps. Their straight, relatively wide bore and positive displacement action mean that they will never block or clog.
mosquito's precise X,Y,Z positioning enables the pipettes to enter a 1536-well plate accurately, access microplate sub-wells with ease or set up high density arrays. mosquito will reliably touch off against the bottom of the plate for dry dispenses, or to a defined level in the well for wet dispenses. This precision also allows mosquito to reliably place drops on top of drops without the risk of these not coinciding.
