The Earlham Institute was awarded a Flexible Talent Mobility Award (FTMA) from BBSRC – designed to facilitate short-term exchanges between academic or industrial institutions – to place two automation specialists from the Institute’s Technical Genomics Group at SPT Labtech.
Image© SPT Labtech
SPT Labtech develops state-of-the-art laboratory automation, enabling more efficient library preparation workflows through innovative all-in-one liquid handling platforms.
To support users, they provide a catalogue of standard, off-the-shelf methods, which are rigorously tested to ensure they meet the needs and expectations of customers. Miniaturisation is an important aspect of the new instrument, cutting costs and increasing throughput.
During the development of their latest flagship instrument, firefly®, SPT Labtech wanted to better understand the range of user needs and potential applications of their technology, particularly in genomics research.
As the instrument allows users to write their own protocols, they were keen to learn more about what firefly® users might be looking to do and gather feedback to ensure the design and functionality was meeting those needs.
As part of this work, they hosted two of the Earlham Institute’s automation experts – finding out more about our approach to miniaturisation, the functionality needed to write our own workflows, as well as identifying and testing the instrument’s limits for miniaturising liquid handling workflows.
Sequencing costs are reducing more and more, which means the costs of library preparation are felt more keenly. Miniaturisation and automation are two ways in which you can lower the cost of library preparation.
The Earlham Institute was awarded a Flexible Talent Mobility Award (FTMA) from BBSRC – designed to facilitate short-term exchanges between academic or industrial institutions – to place two automation specialists from the Institute’s Technical Genomics Group at SPT Labtech.
Tom Brabbs is a Senior Scientist and Jim Lipscombe is a Senior Research Assistant, both working in the Institute’s Technical Genomics Group. Together, they have a wealth of experience in workflow development and miniaturisation.
During the two-week placement, Tom and Jim worked alongside SPT Labtech’s application development scientists to develop, test, and adapt a DNA sequencing workflow based on the LITE protocol, originally developed at the Earlham Institute. This involved an iterative process of miniaturising the existing protocol to identify the limits and capabilities of the instrument, while contributing to the development of LITE2.
Tom and Jim were able to test the thresholds of miniaturisation, successfully demonstrating the limit could go to 5x. They also showed how they would set the instrument up, write their own methodologies, and gave feedback on the software.
“They wanted to learn how users might test some of the instrument’s miniaturisation capabilities and we wanted to miniaturise our protocol,” explained Tom. “It was a great opportunity for them to see how we’d use their system while trying to address a need we have.”
The Earlham Institute’s work applies a range of platform technologies to study diverse organisms and ecosystems, which is particularly useful during R&D. Tom and Jim were able to think about applications of the instrument outside of a typical user’s remit.
Jim and Tom gave us invaluable new insights we could act on to benefit all our users – particularly those applying firefly® to genomics-based workflows.
Transformative Genomics is a BBSRC-supported National Bioscience Research Infrastructure, providing the UK bioscience community with access to the Earlham Institute’s platforms and expertise across several operational and Faculty groups, including Technical Genomics.
One of the key objectives of Transformative Genomics is to enable the translation of advances in genomics and bioinformatics into real-world practice, in partnership with industry. The FTMA placements provided a way to learn more about how the Institute’s expertise can help develop new products and services.
By contributing the time and expertise of two automation specialists from the Institute’s Technical Genomics Group, the Earlham Institute was able to support to the development of firefly®. The project will benefit both users of the instrument and the Institute itself.
The longstanding relationship between the two partners created an opportunity to use the FTMA placements as a way to formalise and deepen existing discussions that began early in the development of the instrument, and continued after.
Benefitting SPT Labtech
Jim and Tom conducted their placement at SPT Labtech during the development and launch of firefly® so were able to make a direct contribution towards late-stage development work and potential focus areas.
In particular, the FTMA placement was invaluable in the refinement of firefly® instrument. “When there’s a long list of things we could do, the feedback really helps us to prioritise these tasks with the user in mind,” said Paul Lomax, Product Manager at SPT Labtech.
“If something keeps coming up time and again, or we can start to see a feature where users are likely to need more support, we can pre-emptively address that.
“Jim and Tom gave us invaluable new insights we could act on to benefit all our users – particularly those applying firefly® to genomics-based workflows.”
Benefitting the Earlham Institute
One of the Institute’s long-term aims is to better understand the processes undertaken by industrial partners when developing a new product. These insights into R&D could potentially be applied in our own work, with Jim and Tom finding many similarities between approaches.
“It’s important to recognise the importance of miniaturisation in genomics for the future,” said Jim.
“Sequencing costs are reducing more and more, which means the costs of library preparation are felt more keenly. Miniaturisation and automation are two ways in which you can lower the cost of library preparation.
“LITE2 is now a real workhorse for the Technical Genomics group. The majority of the samples that we receive will use this workflow, so the miniaturisation work has an important impact.”
