PIPETTE RESOURCE GUIDE What to Know Before Buying Pipettes Time to Upgrade? Benefits of Electronic Pipettes A Guide to Proper Pipetting Tips for Ergonomic Pipette Use and Tips for Low-Volume Pipetting Featured Manufacturers Pipette Resource Guide How does the volume of samples being worked What to Know with influence which pipette is the best fit? Pipetting for high-throughput applications involves using your Before Buying thumb over and over again to push down on and release the piston on the pipette and then to eject the pipette tip. This Pipettes repeated movement can result in repetitive strain injuries. If your application requires a large amount of pipetting, consider Pipettes are used for the accurate transfer of liquids in the investing in an electronic pipette. These pipettes contain a motor preparation of reactions, experiments, and other solutions. These that precisely regulates aspiration and dispensing rates with handheld instruments are one of the most frequently used tools push-button functionality, limiting the force that must be exerted in the lab and you should consider ergonomics and the comfort by the user’s thumb to perform a pipetting task. They have the of your workers when purchasing. The right pipette can also help added advantage of reducing measurement error in experiments optimize your lab’s productivity. with many samples and replicates. What volume of samples will you be pipetting? Maintenance Tip Pipettes are specifically tailored to aspirate and dispense within certain volume ranges. It’s important to stay within the pipette’s Right out of the box, verify that your new volume range to prevent damage to the instrument. For this pipette has been properly calibrated. After reason, consider the volumes you will be pipetting before making purchasing decisions. Consistent calibration and maintenance of that, the frequency of calibration depends your pipettes will help ensure that your pipettes are aspirating on how often your pipette is used and and dispensing the correct volume, which is important especially how accurate you need it to be. Some labs when pipetting small volumes. For high volume pipetting in the partner with an outside provider for annual milliliter range, you’ll want to use a serological pipette with a controller. calibrations while performing interim verifications in-house. Look for calibration What is your sample throughput? as a provided service when purchasing. High-throughput applications like qPCR or ELISA use mi- croplates containing 24, 96, 384, or 1536 wells. Multi-channel pipettes have multiple pistons so you can aspirate and dispense liquids into multiple wells with a single pipette movement. Using multi-channel pipettes can help you prepare your samples faster while limiting the number of times you have to aspirate and dispense liquids, decreasing your chances of acquiring repetitive strain injuries like “pipette thumb.” Lab Manager 2 Pipette Resource Guide Regular pipette maintenance is important and how often it needs Time to to be done depends on how often the pipette is used, the types of solutions being pipetted, how many people are using the pipette, and if the user’s industry is regulated, the experts say. In general, Upgrade? yearly calibrations are recommended. Regular calibration will Liquid handling technology is help extend the life of the instrument and improve failure rates. always improving Upgrading a pipette really has only two cons: the up-front cost by Rachel Muenz to purchase and the time it takes to adjust to the new instrument. Pipettes can be very personal, and it can take time for a user to Pipettes. They can be found in almost every laboratory and, if get used to the touch and feel of a new pipette. you’re looking to buy one, there are many options— manual or electronic, single or multi-channel. Luckily, a few main considerations can help in deciding whether or not to buy the OPTIONS FOR USERS: latest pipette technology. First, a user should check their current with an unlimited budget pipettes to see if they are working properly and if they still fit the • Buy the latest and greatest technology available user’s needs. Consulting with vendors and their technicians is • Go for an electronic pipette—the increased also helpful. accuracy is worth it • Purchase a pipette that uses a positive Vendors can supply the most up-to-date replacement parts. It’s displacement system, which provides the best also likely you’ll get the lowest price by going directly to the precision and accuracy manufacturer to have a pipette repaired, calibrated, or checked. • If the budget is truly unlimited and the need is In addition, manufacturers can provide quotes so you can decide there, an automated system is the way to go whether it’s worth it to repair the pipette or more cost-effective to buy a new one. OPTIONS FOR USERS: Despite the up-front cost, buying new means better precision, with a tight budget accuracy, ergonomics, programming, and usability, so users can • Ensure pipettes are checked/maintained be more productive and save on reagent costs. The newest model frequently often includes new features that can improve performance even • Make sure to buy pipettes that are easy for users more. to maintain and calibrate themselves • Send current pipettes to a service center for a However, if users’ current pipettes aren’t causing any ergonomic quick check up (can be done for under $20) injuries, are still accurate, aren’t being used to pipette harsh • Check out the trade-in or lease programs solutions, and are being maintained and calibrated regularly, available there is probably no need to upgrade. In some cases, the pipette • Look into replacing several manual pipettes with might have been written into operating procedures, so it would one electronic one be difficult to change or upgrade. Lab Manager 3 Pipette Resource Guide and the industry itself, as it moved toward production of Benefits of microcentrifuges and graduated microvolume test tubes. More recent advances in pipetting technology stem from increased throughput in experimentation. The success of the Human Electronic Genome Project, and the rise of deep sequencing platforms, spurred companies to begin introducing electronic pipettes. Now, many laboratories have a range of pipetting options, with Pipettes electronic repeater and multichannel pipettes, and a full series of Electronic pipettes are the preferred solution for manual P20, P200, and P1000 pipettes for each staff member. efficiency, consistency, and reliability Choice can sometimes be an experimental hazard, though. It is frustrating to watch a student pipet vanishingly small volumes, for instance adding 0.27 microliters of an enzyme in 10 percent by Brandoch Cook glycerol to a reaction tube using a P2. Additionally, because of the ability of the manual piston to go past its point of measured A pipette is a thin tube used for transferring liquids, and has been accuracy, people erroneously take up volumes that exceed the an indispensable tool of science since the time of Pasteur. He and calibrated range. As manual pipettes are particularly vulnerable other Victorian-era scientists used bulbs, inlet tubes, and cotton to hysteresis, transfer of seemingly identical volumes to many wool filters to enhance suction and forestall contamination. samples is actually subject to a significant amount of error. Although their volumetric consistency was inadequate, these Finally, how can any of us over the age of 35 hope to be accurate adaptations spurred a leap forward in microbiology and allowed when we can’t even see the little tick marks in between the researchers to safely transfer liquids with their fingers instead of microliter values anymore? their mouths. Nonetheless, the first report of infection occurred contemporaneously, in 1893, when a researcher mouth-pipetted Electronic pipettes contain a motor to precisely regulate the bacterium that causes typhoid. The victim was a sentinel for trends to come, and by the 1950s up to 40 percent of laboratory- aspiration and dispensing rates, which reduces air bubbles derived infections were caused by mouth pipetting. A 1966 US and barrel contamination. Moreover, repeater pipettes reduce Army study came to the obvious conclusion that researchers measurement error in experiments with many samples and should stop doing it. Heedless of this advice, bacterial and replicates. Push-button functionality provides an ergonomic viral infections, radioactive poisoning, and chemical burns advantage, avoiding mechanical wear associated with force- were common occurrences until the 1970s, when precision dependent actions like tip ejection, and obviating laboratory micropipettes became widespread. casualties like pipette thumb. Electronic pipettes are often programmable, allow storage and modification of protocols, save The manual, piston-stroke micropipette was introduced by on overall tip usage, and drive greater efficiency in experimental Eppendorf in 1961 and marked significant improvements in setup. Several providers have taken the technology a step further accuracy and standardization compared to previous iterations, and created linked smart pipetting systems. Manufacturers now oral or otherwise, which depended on forces of suction and offer pipettes that are programmable and Bluetooth-enabled, expulsion that were unique to each user. Gilson later updated allowing them to keep track of complex multi-well pipetting the technology to allow for adjustable volume control. The tasks in real time and store data for further analysis. Finally, introduction of instruments oriented toward microliter amounts although electronic pipettes are usually two to three times helped drive biomedical science into the realm of the very small. the price of manual ones, the increased accuracy, and hence It changed investigators’ approaches to scientific questions, efficiency and confidence in results, are well worth it. Lab Manager 4 Pipette Resource Guide Product Spotlight Thermo Scientific ClipTip Pipetting System The Thermo ScientificTM ClipTipTM Pipetting System will help save you time and increase your efficiency through improved ergonomics, fewer mistakes and reproducible results.