(1377-B) Sustainable Vitamin A; Automating a Viability Assay to Increase Sample Processing Capacity and Gain More Insights
Monday, February 5, 2024
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST
Location: Exhibit Halls AB
Abstract: DSM-Firmenich has developed a novel method to produce Vitamin A via yeast fermentation– a sustainable alternative to synthesizing the vitamin from petroleum substrates. In the improvement of this vitamin production method a series of fermentation experiments are continuously performed, requiring significant manual efforts in running Viability Assays to acquire data about how experimental conditions affect the yeast cells’ health and performance. In this study, we investigated the time savings gained by integrating a Tecan Fluent liquid handler to perform all pipetting steps in the Viability Assay and the improvement to the number of samples that can be analyzed. A script was developed on the Tecan Fluent liquid handler to execute a serial dilution of original cell samples and make three copies of each diluted set. The script then transfers a different combination of cell stains to each set of diluted sample sets before mixing and transferring the final sample sets to three individual plates in duplicates. The time was compared for running a Viability Assay for 48 samples manually versus on the Tecan Fluent and resulted in saving 4 hours of total time and 6 hours of hands-on time per assay. This time savings translated to increasing the sample processing capacity by 50% and led to more valuable information gained on how the fermentation process can be improved.