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Define your liquids
Open the Elements panel, search for Define Liquids And Plates, then click the element to add it to the canvas.
On the canvas, click the element to open a list of inputs to the element (i.e., a list of things that you can control).
From the Define From input, select Table Editor to expose some inputs that you can use to define your liquids, then click Add Spreadsheet to open the table editor.
Define the liquids in Synthace
If you don’t already have a file that describes your liquids, complete the table in Synthace.
For example, in the following image, we have four liquids with varying liquid handling policies, concentrations, tags, plate locations and volumes.
When you have defined all of your liquids, click Done.
Define the liquids from a file
If you already have a file in which you described your liquids, you can upload the file to Synthace.
In this example, we have used a spreadsheet to define the same four liquids, but the column headings in the file are not what the table expects. As such, we must use the Map Headers form to tell Synthace which columns contain what data.
Click Upload, then locate and open the file in which you described your liquids.
Use the Map Headers form to match your column headers to those that the table expects, then click Done.
Synthace populates the table with the values from your file.
Aliquot the liquids to a new plate
Let's instruct a device to transfer a single aliquot of each of these liquids to a new plate.
Open the Elements panel, search for Aliquot, then click the element to add it to the canvas.
We now need to pass the liquids that we defined in the Define Liquids And Plates element to the Aliquot element, so that the Aliquot element knows which liquids to aliquot.
To do so, click and drag the Liquids output from the Define Liquids And Plates element to the Liquids To Aliquot input of the Aliquot element.
Click the Aliquot element, then specify the Aliquot Volume and Replicates.
Tip: To specify the same value for every liquid, use default as the identifier name, then specify the value that you want. To specify a different value for every liquid with a specific tag, use the tag as the identifier (e.g.,
Sample), then specify the value that you want. This overrides the default value. To specify a different value for a specific liquid, use the name of the liquid as the identifier (e.g.,LiquidA), then specify the value that you want. This overrides the default and/or tag-specific values. This behaviour is true for most inputs unless stated otherwise.In our example, LiquidA will have an aliquot volume of 100ul, Liquid B and Liquid C (which have the
Sampletag) will have aliquot volumes of 75ul, and every other liquid (i.e., Liquid D) will have an aliquot volume of 50ul.Specify a Plate Set Name and a Plate Type.
Simulate the workflow
Check that the device that you selected can follow the instructions that you prepared. To learn how, click here.
Preview the execution
After you simulate the workflow, click View Simulation to open the simulation details.
Open the Preview tab, then click through the steps to check that the instructions that Synthace has generated are correct.
Advanced feature: Define some sub-components
If you have liquids that contain some sub-components, you might want to track those sub-components through a workflow. To do so, complete the following steps.
If the table editor is not already open, click Add Spreadsheet to open it.
Click Add Subcomponent or Tag, then select
Subcomponent.Give the sub-component a name, then click Save.
Synthace adds two columns to the table. Use them to provide concentration values and units for the liquids that contain the sub-component.
Note: You can add as many sub-component columns to the table as you need.
Advanced feature: Add some metadata
A piece of metadata is an important nugget of information that you want to add to your liquids (e.g., their batch or lot numbers, or the upstream preparation method that they received).
If you add some metadata to your liquids, Synthace will track that metadata throughout your workflow, and you can select the liquids with the metadata in a similar way to tags.
If the table editor is not already open, click Add Spreadsheet to open it.
Click Add Subcomponent or Tag, then select
Tag.Give the metadata a name, then click Save.
Synthace adds a column to the table. For each liquid, use the column to provide a value for the metadata.
Note: You can add as many metadata columns to the table as you need.
Check your work:
To see what your finished workflow to this tutorial should look like simply navigate to the Tutorials and search for Tutorial 1: Define Liquids and Plates.
Challenges
We have covered how to define liquids, the use of tags, metadata and subcomponents. Samples can have multiple tags in their definition. These can either be added as new metadata columns or included in the Tags parameter. Each tag must be separated by the vertical bar | character. See if you can add additional tags to LiquidsB and LiquidC.