Primary Function: The Echo 550 Acoustic Droplet Ejection System is a cutting-edge liquid handler that utilizes focused ultrasonic acoustic energy for non-contact, high-precision liquid transfer. This innovative technology eliminates the need for physical tips, preventing cross-contamination and reducing reagent waste. It enables the precise ejection of nanoliter-sized droplets from source wells to destination plates, revolutionizing workflows in various life science applications.

Technical Specifications:

1. Manufacturer: Beckman Coulter Life Sciences (formerly Labcyte)
2. Droplet volume: 2.5 nL
3. Transfer volume: 2.5 nL to 10 µL (dependent on fluid type, assay, and source plate used). Larger volumes are achieved by rapidly transferring multiple 2.5 nL droplets.
4. Transfer Precision: <8% CV (except protein crystallography fluid class)
5. Transfer Accuracy: <10% deviation from target volume
6. Supported liquid types: Aqueous, 50% glycerol, 100% DMSO, various surfactants and organics, buffers, nucleic acid and protein solutions, serum, cell culture media, and volatile liquids like ethanol and acetone.
7. Capable of viable cell transfer.
8. Features Dynamic Fluid Analysis, a patented software algorithm that adjusts acoustic energy in real-time, eliminates manual calibration, and ensures accurate transfers across a wide range of fluids.
9. Includes a survey function to determine fluid height and properties in source wells, including DMSO hydration levels, to monitor sample integrity.
10. Comes with Echo Plate Reformat software for hit picking, plate replication, library compression, and customizable reformatting, which can be defined using a spreadsheet.
11. Also includes Echo Cherry Pick software for transferring any volume from any source well to any destination well, and Echo Dose-Response software.
12. Requires use of specific Echo-Qualified 384-well and 1536-well microplates for source material.
13. Capable of dispensing to 96, 384, 1536, and 3456 well destination plates.
14. Integrated with the inSPIRE workstation, which also includes the Mantis, ViiA 7 RT-PCR, ODTCs, Fragment Analyzer Infinity, ALPS 3000, HiG 3, and XPeel for high-throughput experimentation.

Applications: The Echo 550 is widely used for liquid transfer, hit picking, drug discovery, high-throughput screening, secondary screening, plate reformatting, ADMET, compound management, PCR, qPCR, synthetic biology, NGS library preparation, Sanger sequencing, cell-based assays, biochemical assays, epigenetics, protein crystallography, siRNA screening, library reformatting, reverse transfection, single-cell analysis, and dose-response experiments.