Molecular biologists at the Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry Laimburg in Northern Italy, have developed a semi-automated procedure for extracting and isolating high quality DNA from cereal crops, using the Te-MagS™ magnetic separation module from Tecan. The researchers are performing large-scale microsatellite marker analysis to genetically characterize local cereal landraces, in order to establish and maintain a germplasm collection for these crops.

“Isolation of DNA from plant tissue represents a crucial step for the quality and outcome of subsequent downstream applications, such as PCR, sequencing or genotyping, but this step can also be a considerable bottleneck for extensive plant genotyping studies,” explained Dr Sanja Baric, head of the Molecular Biology Section at the research centre. “The semi-automated magnetic bead-based separation procedure that we have established with the Te-MagS has at least doubled our throughput and more than halved the manual labor time compared to conventional cetyl-trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB)-based protocols.”

Dr Baric’s set-up includes a Tecan Freedom EVO® 100 liquid handling workstation with an integrated Te-MagS module for fully automated DNA isolation from manually prepared plant lysates. The final DNA elutes from 48 samples can be prepared within 90 minutes, and are of sufficient quality to give accurate amplification of many different microsatellite loci.

To find out more on Tecan’s Te-MagS module, visit www.tecan.com/te-mags.

About Tecan

Tecan (www.tecan.com) is a leading global supplier of laboratory instruments and solutions for the biopharma, forensic and diagnostic industries. The company specializes in the development, production and distribution of automation solutions for life science laboratories. Through its REMP subsidiary (www.remp.com), Tecan is the premier supplier of automated laboratory storage and logistics systems. Tecan's clients include pharmaceutical and biotech companies, university research departments, diagnostic laboratories and companies as well as forensics laboratories. Founded in Switzerland in 1980, the company has production, research and development sites in both North America and Europe and maintains a sales and service network in 52 countries. In 2007, Tecan achieved sales of CHF 414.4 million (USD 345.3 million; EUR 252.7 million). Registered shares of the Tecan Group are traded on the SWX Swiss Exchange (TK: TECN/Reuters: TECZn.S/Valor: 1210019).

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