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:
- Manufacturer: Beckman Coulter Life Sciences (formerly Labcyte)
- Droplet volume: 2.5 nL
- 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.
- Transfer Precision: <8% CV (except protein crystallography fluid class)
- Transfer Accuracy: <10% deviation from target volume
- 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.
- Capable of viable cell transfer.
- 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.
- Includes a survey function to determine fluid height and properties in source wells, including DMSO hydration levels, to monitor sample integrity.
- Comes with Echo Plate Reformat software for hit picking, plate replication, library compression, and customizable reformatting, which can be defined using a spreadsheet.
- Also includes Echo Cherry Pick software for transferring any volume from any source well to any destination well, and Echo Dose-Response software.
- Requires use of specific Echo-Qualified 384-well and 1536-well microplates for source material.
- Capable of dispensing to 96, 384, 1536, and 3456 well destination plates.
- 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.