NT8 Crystallography
Key Features
8-Tip Low Volume Manifold
The NT8 is equipped with an 8-tip a low volume manifold that uses positive displacement micro-syringes to aspirate and dispense any volume between 100 nL and 1 µL. The 8-tip manifold uses custom pipette tips that can be washed for reuse to reduce cost and environmental waste or can be disposed of to guarantee zero cross-contamination. Tip replacement is fast and occurs in less than five seconds.
Sitting Drop Setting
The NT8 is designed to rapidly set sitting drops for crystallization experiments. To set sitting drops, the system first draws the protein from the built in protein tray that has three 8- well columns. Each well on the protein tray can hold up to 3µL of protein. The system will then aspirate any required well solution and dispense the drops in the desired location. The NT8 uses contact dispensing to set the drops.
Hanging Drop Setting
The NT8 has two plate positions on the deck for both a microplate and a hanging drop cover sheet. To set hanging drops, the system will first aspirate the protein from the protein tray then aspirate well solution from the appropriate wells on the microplate. The NT8 will mirror the well solution on the microplate by dispensing the drops in reverse column order on the sheet.
Plate Copy
The NT8 can have an independent plate copy head can aspirate and dispense up to 200µL of reagent from a deep well block to a crystallization plate. The plate copy head consists of 8 positive displacement syringes capable of dispensing viscous reagents. The NT8 deck can accommodate one rack of standard 200µL pipette tips and can load and eject tips automatically.
Tip Washing
The tips used for aspirating and dispensing can all be washed and reused for future use. A built in wash station cleans all eight tips simultaneously in 5 seconds with a water rinse. The system first flushes all the reagent and small amount of system liquid (water) cleaning the inside of the tips. The tips are then moved into the wash station wells where the NT8 forces system liquid out of the tips to fill wash receptacles and wash the outside of the tips.