(1189-B) Miniaturized, fully automated NEBNext Direct Genotyping Solution using the Biomek i7 Hybrid Automated Workstation in conjunction with the Echo 525 Acoustic Liquid Handler for marker-assisted breeding

Abstract: The New England Biolabs NEBNext Direct Genotyping Solution delivers cost-effective, high-throughput NGS-based targeted genotyping for plant and animal applications by allowing efficient genotyping of thousands of markers with high target coverage and uniformity. Through the use of pre-capture barcoding, pooling of up to 96 samples per capture, and dual barcoding, the NEBNext Direct Genotyping Solution allows up to 9,216 samples to be processed in parallel on Illumina sequencers. To fully leverage the potential of the NEBNext Direct Genotyping Solution at scale, we developed an automation solution utilizing the Beckman Coulter Biomek i7 Hybrid Automated Workstation working in conjunction with the Beckman Coulter Echo 525 Acoustic liquid handler that was fully automated and employed the use of miniaturization of certain reaction volumes to reduce operational cost per sample while maintaining data quality. Here we demonstrate that the development of this automated solution for running the NEBNext Direct Genotyping Solution on the Biomek i7 Hybrid Automated Workstation with the Beckman Coulter Echo 525 Acoustic liquid handler can address the high throughput demands of marker-assisted plant breeding applications.