Microtiter plate

A microtiter plate (English microwell plate, of Engl. Well for shaft ) is a laboratory device for the investigation of biological properties, such as the absorption measurement in photometers or in high-throughput screening (HTS, high throughput test) in the pharmaceutical and crop protection research.

Construction

Most microtiter plates are usually rectangular, plastic ( usually polystyrene, sometimes PVC), very special applications, made ​​of glass. They contain many insulated from each other wells ( wells, english wells) in rows and columns. The exact dimensions (length × width × height) be in accordance with ANSI standard on the recommendation of the Society for Biomolecular Screening (SBS ) 127.76 mm × 85.48 mm × 14.35 mm.

There are a variety of formats, all on the same footprint and part-variable height:

  • 6 cups (2 × 3), filling volume between 2-5 ml
  • 12 wells (3 × 4), filling volume of 2-4 ml
  • 24 wells (4 × 6 ), filling volume between 0.5-3 ml
  • 48 wells (6 × 8), filling volume between 0.5-1.5 ml
  • 96 wells (8 × 12) and a capacity of between 0.1-0.3 ml
  • 384 wells (16 × 24), filling volume between 0.03-0.1 ml
  • 1536 wells (32 × 48 ), filling volume 0.01 ml These are used in UHTS (Ultra HTS).

The cups are available in various forms: F-bottom (flat bottom ), C-bottom (flat bottom with minimal rounded corners ), V-bottom ( tapered bottom ) and U-bottom ( U-groove ).

The standardization is carried out so far by the Society for Biomolecular Sciences as the ANSI standard (ANSI / SBS 1-2004, ANSI / SBS 2-2004, ANSI / SBS 3-2004, ANSI / SBS 4-2004 ) and are viewed here. Microtiter plates can be cleaned with specially produced washing machines and sterilized.

Use

Microtiter plates are used for a variety of microbiological operations. Typical applications include cell cultivation or screening technical bioreactions. Due to the large number of cavities and the use of the same types, microtiter plates are suitable for culturing and testing large numbers of samples.

The filling is done manually usually with multichannel, high-throughput mostly with pipetting robots. For the readout of the measurement results, a variety of devices ( Plate Reader ) is available, which specialize in certain chemical or physical changes. Thus it is possible in a short time a large number ( > 100,000 ) of different substances to be tested for a desired biological activity.

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