I am looking to re-array four 24-well plates to a single 96-well plate using the 96MPH on our Vantage…
I have re-arrayed 96 tips into four racks of 24 with 18mm raster using the STAR MPH96 Tools library, but am now thinking of the sequence requirements:
For 96MPH in the source 24-well plates, I’m using the re-arrayed tips and pipetting from a “fake” 96-wp sequence that aligns the respective A1 wells of the 96 and 24-well plate on center.
For dispensing into the target 96-well plate, is it advised to take a similar approach and overlay a “fake” 384-well plate behind the 96-well plate to allow pipetting to four sets of 96 positions?
Or would it be better to use the STAR Tools to re-array staggered sets of 24-tips (e.g. first tip of the first rack is in A1, first tip of the second rack is in A2, third in B1, fourth in B2 so that I could pipette “on center” to the 96 well target plate (to all 96 sequence positions) without the need for a fake 384. Just taking into account that for the source, I’d need to align the fake 96-well plate with the 24-well plate sequence such that 4 tips will be able to access… Only downside being the user would have to ensure they load 4 uniquely arrayed tip boxes of 24 instead of 4 with all the same format (we’ll likely have a stock of pre-arrayed tips for ease of use)
Any input or experience on this topic appreciated!
I think you are trying to do what I have done already and I vaguely remember you were looking for a labware definition for a 24well plate.
Remember that the 96MPH is always counting in 96 positions. So no matter what you do, your sequence is 96. My advice is to fill a 96 tip support with 24 tips on different positions ( 1 -3 - 5 - 7 -17 - 19 -21 -23 etc etc) and perform a tip pickup with the MPH. You can aspirate regularly from your plates and then for the dispense you dispense the first dispense on the 96 plate like you are used to.
Next up is to decide what you wish to do. How do you divde your plates.
A1 = Plate 1
A2 = Plate 2
B1 = Plate 3
B2 = Plate 4
If you use this logic, you need to know that the distance between each well is 9mm. Meaning that now you repeat you aspiration, but for the dispense you shift your sequence with the VirtualLabwareV2 and MoveSeq on X or Y by 9mm (depending on your choice). Don’t forget to do the OPPOSITE after you are done with the dispense.
That way you can get a 24well plate into a 96 well plate. This is the easiest way of doing it. It’s a bit of a nightmare if you have proper datahandling, (basically you loop 4 times so y hae 4x the same positions)
edit:
And we are in automation, so we do not let the user prepare racks. We have the LH for that Just create a sequence on your tip support and let it be filled by a regular tip pickup and eject with sequence counting ON.
Thanks @Pascal. The virtual shift makes sense for the dispense, and I will try that strategy here.
Regarding potential data handling troubles with this strategy which you hinted at, have you found a way to overcome the fact that we are dispensing to the same sequence 4 times?
Ideally I’d like to generate a .csv output file which describes which wells were pipetted where for data tracking purposes. Ultimately this 24wp-96wp pattern will be standardized and be performed the same way every single time, so we could parse and generate this file outside of Venus, but just curious.
I could see using four separate 96-wp labware on the deck shifted by the 9mm as needed and at least then I could name four separate sequences for output purposes.
And good point - we have set up a method for custom tip re-arraying, so we are all set there!
The datahandling part took a few moments to visualize, but our method is connected to a LIMS. So what I did was write all my data to a lims sequence and during the dispense I had a counter running next to the pipetting. So plate 1 would count from 1-24, plate 2 from 25 to 48 etc. So what I’ve done was calculate the value for X to any alphanumeric number (1-96 / A1 - H12) and look this up in the lims sequence. Then I would write this data to the reporting sequence and at the end of the method use this information for reporting.
Just create a sequence on your tip support and let it be filled by a regular tip pickup and eject with sequence counting ON.