UK-based genomics company RevoluGen has teamed up with Swiss laboratory instruments and solutions provider Tecan, for the latter’s 96-well filter plates.
Under the partnership, the companies will manufacture and supply Tecan’s 96-well filter plates, for use with RevoluGen’s automated Fire Monkey High Molecular Weight (HMW)-DNA extraction kits.
The partnership will facilitate automated DNA extraction using the Tecan’s 96-well plates, incorporating the unique Fire Monkey extraction technology.
The 96-well filter plates are optimised for use on Tecan’s Resolvex A200 positive pressure automation robot.
The approach will speed up the preparatory workflow required for high throughput of both short and long read DNA sequencing applications, at reduced costs, said RevoluGen.
Revolugen CEO Pieter Haitsma Mulier said: “The 96-well plate supply agreement announced today is a culmination of two years’ successful development of one of the first automated extraction of library ready, HMW-DNA in a laboratory standard format multi-well plate.
Tecan SP division marketing head Shang Tsai said: “We are pleased to be Revolugen’s partner of choice for the supply of the 96-well plates optimised to work on our instruments for automated DNA extraction.
“Rapid growth of sequencing worldwide is driving the need for automation to handle the volume of samples needed for applications such as population genomics, epidemiological mutation screening and antibiotic microbial resistance gene monitoring research.”
Both Tecan and RevoluGen have initially partnered in 2020, to jointly work on validating an automated DNA extraction workflow.
The current partnership enables the commercial launch of an automated version of the Fire Monkey HMW-DNA extraction kits, which is expected to be commercialised early 2023.
RevoluGen has developed the patent-protected technology based on a spin-column based protocol to extract HMW-DNA using a high g-force.
Fire Monkey provides DNA fragments with an average length of 100kb, which are considered not too short nor not too long, in a relatively tightly defined range of lengths.
The technology also allows for size tuning to produce DNA fragments in very tight bands of smaller lengths below its standard 100kb average DNA extract length.
In addition, Fire Monkey technology combines sample preparation for both short-read and long-read DNA sequencing.
The Tecan A200 has already been installed at the Quadram Institute Bioscience (QIB) in the UK, to run the Fire Monkey automated HMW DNA extraction workflow.
RevoluGen CSO and Fire Monkey technology inventor Georgios Patsos said: “With traditional manual protocols only a handful of biological samples can be processed in parallel.
“This is a significant issue for the multiplexed sequencing runs routinely used in areas such as antimicrobial resistance surveillance.
“Our validated Fire Monkey process for automated HMW-DNA extraction will further lower the overall cost of multiplexed sequencing and accelerate the uptake of sequencing in many high-volume dependent applications.”
