Acquisition of a Tecan Fluent 780

The Department of Forensic Medicine, Section of forensic genetics serves as the national laboratory for DNA analyses in criminal, paternity and family reunion cases commissioned by the police, the judicial system, government authorities, the Danish Immigration Service, etc. It does not perform genealogical analyses for private individuals. The section employs some 100 people, including forensic geneticists, laboratory and secretarial staff and IT developers.

The Tecan Fluent 780 will be used in the pipeline from DNA extraction to DNA profile generation used for criminal, paternity and family reunion cases commissioned by the police, the judicial system, government authorities, and Danish Immigration Service.

A high quality semi-automated liquid handling platform is necessary for DNA normalization and setup for PCR. As this lab is the only one to provide DNA analyses in criminal, paternity and family reunion cases high quality and reliability is important.

The Tecan Fluent 780, liquid handling robot is required to maintain the high-throughput of DNA analyses and maintain the high quality assurance.

This Tecan Fluent 780 will replace one of our current Tecan EVO Freedom which is an older version from the current supplier. These are well know to the staff and will therefore be easier to develop methods for and operate by the users.

The 8 channel variable span from Tecan also stand out from many robots because it does pipetting with air (as opposed to water). This makes it possible to have in-channel pressure measurements to ensure monitoring of pipetting during aspiration and dispensing.

The Tecan software also have a method recovery where variables and sample tracking is stored – this is important to prevent the loss of samples and keep track of samples even during an unexpected error.

The TECAN is the only liquid handler with inline filters to prevent and detect contaminations with aerosols or liquids. This is greatly important for preventing contaminations.

Methods for DNA normalization and setup for PCR have already been developed in house for the Tecan EVO. Features within this method requires the reading of a Tecan specific text file that can easily be implemented with the new Tecan software. Thereby greatly increasing the speed of development.

Furthermore, the Tecan control software is the only software that has a feature to manually record the position of a gripper/channel and use this position later. This is substantially time-saving during development.

This liquid handler will replace one of our current aging Tecan EVO liquid handler. Sticking with the same manufacture of liquid handler will greatly increase the speed of adoption and likely result in less errors due to the familiar interface.

Getting a different supplier would result in a disproportionate technical difficulty in the implementation of new methods and training of operators and staff. The current workflow, on the Tecan EVO, works by ingesting a .gwl file, the Tecan Fluent will be able to read the same file format. Moreover, the interface is familiar with most operators and does therefore requires less training of staff.