Automated Solutions for Genomic Research

Here, we describe a procedure developed at Color Genomics, a leader in high-quality and affordable genomic healthcare, to extract high-quality genomic DNA (gDNA) from peripheral blood and saliva samples, simultaneously, on the Hamilton Microlab STAR platform using Omega Bio-tek’s Mag-Bind® Blood & Tissue DNA HDQ magnetic bead-based chemistry.

The magnetic bead-based Direct-zol procedure on the Hamilton Microlab STAR platform bypasses phase separation/precipitation and enables high-throughput automated magnetic bead-based purification of high-quality total RNA directly from samples treated in TRIzol or other acid-guanidinium-phenol based reagents. Direct-zol effectively isolates total RNA from a variety of sample sources including cells, tissue, serum, plasma, blood, and biological liquids for downstream applications, like miRNA profiling, RNA-seq, and viral detection.

The ZymoBIOMICS-96 MagBead DNA Kit allows for a simple bind, wash, elute procedure that is unmatched in providing ultra-pure DNA that is free of PCR inhibitors (e.g. polyphenols, humic acids) in as little as 90 minutes for 96 samples, making it ideal for all downstream applications including PCR, arrays, 16s rRNA gene sequencing, and shotgun sequencing. Sample variability is greatly reduced by using the Microlab STAR and the resulting endotoxin-free and high quality DNA is ready for restriction endonuclease digestion, ligation, PCR, transformation, sequencing, etc.

Here, we report an automated method to isolate cfDNA using a magnetic particle-based assay workflow (see Workflow at end) in a high throughput format while accommodating volume requirements, and compare this method to a manual method.