I saw a post on LinkedIn recommending a new plate for use in absorbance assays. It has four chambers per sample with decreasing path lengths, which can eliminate the need to perform dilutions before reading absorbance. The read chambers are 384 formatted, and the input ports are 96 formatted, so its compatible with standard layouts on liquid handlers and plate readers.
I’ve not tried it and I’m not sure I have a use for it yet, but it looks interesting and wanted to share.
Oh that’s cool! I wonder what the price of the SpecPlate is compared to standard microtiter plates.
That is pretty interesting. I wonder how you are meant to get the liquid all the way through all the passages? Is the intention that your pipette tip forms a strong enough seal (but still very weak) that the liquid gets pushed through as you pipette? Or does it happen with a sort of natural capillary action?
I liked that LI post and they reached out the next morning which is awesome!
I’ve seen other similar ideas but not this design specifically which would potentially save a lot of folks a lot of time.
The other one I’m thinking about is by Celldom which “…involves a standard 96-well plate, Yellen said, but at the bottom of each well there are 3,500 microwells, totaling around 300,000 or more microwells per plate. When Celldom creates the co-culture, it adds around 3,000 target cells and 3,000 T-effector cells into the same well, where they randomly sediment to the bottom due to gravity.”
And this randomness then gives you a wide range of ratios which is super interesting.
Yeah probably capillary action and then the giant final well is for any excess liquid.
If you look closely, each row has 24 wells. So my assumption was also that you would not need to force the sample to flow through the chambers, but that it would do so naturally since it is open on both ends.
Looks like a similar idea to the Unchained Lunatic (previously Trinean) plates. Wonder what the difference in cost would be but nice if you don’t need to buy a specific plate reader to run. I would be interested on hearing if it can handle viscous solutions without a pump to drive the liquid given that this path length would be for measuring more concentrated solutions at least for protein absorbance.