The layouts of your output plates can be important and you may need to allocate specific liquids to specific areas of plates. In this tutorial, we see how to allocate liquids to different areas of plates with the Aliquot element.
Get started
Read the introduction to this series of tutorials, then complete all of the previous tutorials in the series. For more information, click here.
Create a workflow in the builder. To learn how, click here.
Rename the workflow Core elements tutorial 2.3. To learn how, click here.
Select the device on which you want to run your workflow. To learn how, click here.
Select a default plate type. To learn how, click here.
Define your liquids
First, you must define the liquids that you want to aliquot.
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 Parameters to expose some inputs that you can use to define your liquids.
In the Names input, click Add New Item, then specify the name
Liquid A. Click Add New Item again, then specify the nameLiquid B.
This is the minimum requirement to define a liquid. To learn how to define a liquid in more depth, see Core elements tutorial 1.0.
Aliquot the liquids to specific wells on different plate sets
1. Open the Elements panel, search for Aliquot, then click the element to add it to the canvas.
2. 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.
3. Click the Aliquot element, then specify the Aliquot Volume for both liquids as 50 ul and the number of Replicates as 48. Tip: Use default to specify the volume and number of replicates for every liquid connected to the Aliquot element.
4. From the Replicate Grouping input, select Keep Replicates Together to expose the Used Layouts input (described in Core elements tutorial 2.5) and the Edit Plate Contents button (described in this tutorial).
5. Describe two plates to which you want Synthace to allocate your aliquots. To do so, in Plate Names, specify a name for each plate. Click Edit Plate Contents to navigate to the plate contents editor and select Plate Types for each plate.
6. Using the plate map in the Plate Contents Editor specify which liquids should be in which wells.
7. Let's allocate Liquid A to the first plate. Click and drag the cursor over the wells to which you want to allocate Liquid A, then click Assign Liquid. From Liquid Identifier, select Liquid A.
8. Select the Well Iteration Order and Well Iteration Pattern for Liquid A, then click Add.
9. Repeat the previous steps to specify where and how you want Synthace to allocate Liquid B on the second plate, then click Done.
Simulate the workflow
1. Check that the device that you selected can follow the instructions that you prepared. To learn how, click here.
Preview the execution
1. After you simulate the workflow, click View Simulation to open the simulation details.
2. Open the Preview tab, then click through the steps to check that the instructions that Synthace has generated are correct.
Notice that Synthace has created two plates for Aliquot Plate A to satisfy our request for 48 aliquots of Liquid A in 24 wells, and that our request for 48 aliquots of Liquid B only requires one Aliquot Plate B. This is because there are enough wells on a single plate to satisfy this requirement. Aliquot Plate A-1 and Aliquot Plate A-2 are part of the Aliquot Plate A set.
Check your work:
To see what your finished workflow to this tutorial should look like simply navigate to the Tutorials and search for Tutorial 2: Allocate liquids to plates and wells.
Challenges
In this tutorial, we used the liquid names as the Liquid Identifier in the Plate Contents Editor. However, we could have used tags.
Modify your liquid definitions to include tags.
Have Synthace allocate the liquids with each tag to specific wells.