We asked our technical experts for their favorite product pairings at the bench.
Some things just belong together: coffee and cream, lock and key, thunder and lightning, antibodies and antigens.
We asked our technical experts about their favorite lab tool combinations across applications, from molecular biology to cell therapy.
1. High-throughput, high-fidelity PCR
We’re kicking off our list with an unlikely pair of ideas: fast and accurate.
Too often in life, you can do something quickly or you can do it correctly – but not both.
When it comes to nucleic acid analysis, sequence accuracy is often non-negotiable. This is certainly true for applications like next-generation sequencing (NGS), mutagenesis, cloning, sequencing, or single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis.
One of our experts’ go-to recommendations for preserving sequence accuracy is Platinum SuperFi II DNA Polymerase, which can achieve >300x the fidelity of Taq DNA polymerase in NGS applications. Hot-start technology inhibits enzyme activity until after denaturation, which helps to prevent nonspecific amplification and primer degradation.
Fidelity comparison across commercially available enzymes relative to Taq enzyme. A 3.9 kb sequence was amplified by PCR using different DNA polymerases, and the resulting PCR amplicons were then fragmented with a MuA transposase. Unique molecular identifiers (UMI), which consist of 12 random nucleotides, were introduced during fragmentation to individually tag each product. After next-generation sequencing, reads were aligned to the correct sequence, grouped by UMI families, and errors were called. Errors were identified only if they were present in all reads in the UMI family; otherwise they were discarded as sequencing errors. The polymerase fidelities were normalized to the Taq DNA polymerase. Read research article here.
The speed comes into play when a high-fidelity polymerase is combined with a high-throughput PCR system that can run up to three independent experiments simultaneously or high-throughput runs with dual 96 or 384 well-blocks.
ProFlex PCR System with the 3 x 32-well block for running up to three independent experiments simultaneously.
With this combination of speed and accuracy, you can have your PCR cake and eat it too (just not literally!).
Our experts recommend:
2. Discovery, development, or manufacturing of nucleic acid therapeutics
In a post- SARS-CoV-2 world, nucleic acid therapeutics continue to gain steam as a technology with endless possibilities. But the monumental achievement of the world’s first mRNA vaccinations owes success to another decades-in-the-making technology focused on optimized lipid shells.
mRNA production involves template linearization, in vitro transcription, DNA removal, and post-transcriptional modification. Below is a summary of many of the materials typically used in mRNA production.
The first COVID-19 vaccines successfully used liquid nanoparticles (LNPs) as the key molecular delivery vehicles for therapeutic mRNA. LNPs are one of the most successful in vivo nano-delivery tools in chemotherapy and cell therapies, antibiotic treatment, and nucleic acid therapeutics today. Like liposomes, LNPs encapsulate a drug to allow controlled access to target cells and tissues.
Overview of in vivo transfection using Invivofectamine 3.0 reagent. LNP-siRNA complexes are injected into the organism, effectively delivering the RNAi payload to target cells.
Our technical experts can help enable nucleic acid R&D from both angles with a robust portfolio of enzymes, nucleotides, and amidites (TheraPure) and industry-leading LNP-based in vivo transfection technologies like Lipofectamine and Invivofectamine reagents.
Our experts recommend:
3. Cell culture
Foundational techniques like cell culture represent the base of your research workflow; with weak materials, it could all fall apart from the bottom up.
When culture tools like plastics, media, FBS, supplements, and cell lines are validated together, researchers can have confidence in holistic, system-wide product performance and reproducibility.
For this reason, R&D experts have created a variety of digital selection tools to help researchers find the most optimized pairings of culture materials, down to the ideal product mix recommended by cell line.
Representative images of MCF7 cells grown in Gibco DMEM supplemented with 10% Gibco FBS, 10 µg/ml human Insulin and 1% Penicillin-Streptomycin (optional). Nunclon Delta 75cm2 flasks were used for cell culture. Images were captured on EVOS M7000 microscope under 10X magnification for low confluency (left) and high confluency (right) images.
Likewise, if there ever was a “power trio” of iconic cell culture basics to recommend, it would be Gibco cell culture media and FBS and Thermo Scientific Nunc cell culture plastics. Researchers will also find options for bench-stable, pre-aliquoted, and more sustainably manufactured media.
Our experts recommend:
4. Cell painting and single-cell analysis
High-content screening (HCS), also known as high-content analysis, is a method of evaluating the phenotype of individual cells or cellular components – aspects like changes in size, shape, organelle content, protein expression levels, and more. It is central to drug discovery and other research questions seeking to identify small molecules like nucleic acids or peptides that can alter the cell in a particular way.
Cell painting is an advanced HCS technique capable of quantifying changes in cellular structures in drug discovery or safety screenings. With cell painting, a researcher can visualize the spatial organization of subcellular components, paving the way towards insights into protein organization, cell viability, cell proliferation and toxicity, DNA damage and more.
Representative image and data readout from an HCS data set acquired on a Cellinsight CX7 LZR Pro system.
With a combination of the right Invitrogen Alexa Fluor Dyes or Invitrogen Image-iT Cell Painting Kit and the CellInsight CX7 LZR Pro HCS, scientists have produced stunning images worthy of framing after use. An onstage incubator also opens the possibility of analyzing live 2D or 3D cell samples over time.
A cell painting kit is ideal for researchers looking for a more convenient high-throughput workflow; the kit provides pre-measured fluorescent conjugates for multi-well plate experiments, validated using reagents based on those noted in the highly cited Nature Protocols cell painting paper that first described the technique in 2016.
Our experts recommend:
- CellInsight CX7 LZR Pro HCS / HCA
- Invitrogen Image-iT Cell Painting Kit
- Invitrogen HCA Onstage Incubator
- Invitrogen Alexa Fluor Dyes
5. Cell therapy manufacturing
One of today’s biggest boons in oncology is also one of its biggest challenges – autologous CAR T-cell therapies can effectively cure some of the toughest blood cancers today, but the GMP manufacturing process for these personalized therapies is complex, lengthy, and a bottleneck to access for many.
A closed, modular system is designed to minimize contamination and uphold the highest GMP standards of quality and safety, while allowing researchers the flexibility to automate and streamline their process.
The Gibco CTS Rotea Counterflow Centrifugation System, Gibco CTS Xenon Electroporation System, and Gibco CTS DynaCellect Magnetic Separation System form a trio of disruptive cell therapy manufacturing innovations that can be combined for even greater effect.
Explore the Virtual T Cell Therapy Manufacturing Lab. Take a virtual tour of an automated cell therapy manufacturing lab and explore tools for T cell manufacturing, lentiviral production, and analytics. In the cell processing and engineering area, the CTS DynaCellect Magnetic Separation System uses magnetic bead technology for target-cell separation. From there, the CTS Rotea cell processing instrument uses counterflow centrifugation to concentrate, wash, or exchange buffers in a closed, automated system. Lastly, the CTS Xenon electroporation system enables closed, scalable electroporation for large-scale nonviral delivery and GMP-compliant cell therapy manufacturing.
Researchers can kick off cell processing and engineering with the CTS DynaCellect, which earned an R&D 100 Award in 2023 for an innovative closed, sterile design that allows GMP-compliant cell isolation.
The CTS Rotea system is another innovative tool, the product of serendipitous academic-industry collaboration . It was born in part out of a researcher’s need to process and buffer the cell samples of extremely premature infants (<500 grams at birth!) within the small confines of a biological safety cabinet.
From there, the CTS Xenon electroporation system offers a gentler method of scalable, customizable nonviral transfection for genetic modification of cells. Like the CTS Rotea system, the CTS Xenon electroporation system was designed in close collaboration with customer-scientists around the world during pandemic quarantine.
By combining these three novel instruments and reliable specialized reagents, a researcher in the cell therapy space can efficiently isolate and enrich a target cell population and then introduce specific genetic modifications or therapeutic genes into the cells.
Our experts recommend:
Automated sample preparation
There are a handful of reasons why labs today are increasingly deciding to automate their sample preparation processes: time savings and scale-up, lower error margins and better reproducibility, improved safety, easy customizability, streamlined staff size, reduced cost and waste, and more.
Automated extraction of nucleic acid, cells, exosomes and proteins can be achieved with either manual or automated laboratory workflows. Academic labs may choose manual workflows for educational research, while biotech companies may use manual workflows for initial validation and transition to automated instruments when scaling up their study or research products.
There is a whole lineup of options for each unique sample preparation need, but the basic formula for success that our technical experts recommend pairs an automated tool like the KingFisher purification systems with a corresponding magnetic bead reagent or kit (Invitrogen Dynabeads magnetic beads or Applied Biosystems MagMAX kits, depending on the sample type and target analyte).
Hands-off, automated sample purification with magnetic bead technology has enabled discoveries in everything from cancer research to wastewater surveillance and microbiome research to paleogenomics and NGS.
Our experts recommend:
- Thermo Scientific KingFisher sample purification systems
- Invitrogen Dynabeads magnetic beads
- Applied Biosystems MagMAX kits
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