Specific Applications, Advantages and Disadvantages of Nucleic Acid Automatic Extractors

Specific Applications

• In the Field of Biomedical Research:
  • Disease Diagnosis: In clinical diagnosis, it can quickly and efficiently extract viral DNA or RNA from patients’ samples such as blood, saliva, and tissues, which is used for pathogen detection, genetic disease diagnosis, and tumor marker analysis, facilitating the early diagnosis of infectious diseases and the monitoring of treatment.
  • Drug Research and Development: During the drug research and development process, it can extract nucleic acids from cell lines and animal models, providing a basis for the study of drug action mechanisms and the evaluation of drug effects.
  • Basic Biological Research: In the fields of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, etc., it provides efficient and accurate nucleic acid samples for scientific researchers to meet the needs of gene expression analysis, gene sequencing, gene editing and other studies.
• In the Field of Public Health: In epidemiological studies, it can accelerate the identification and typing of pathogens, helping to track the spread of diseases and control epidemics. For example, it plays an important role in the rapid and automated epidemic monitoring of influenza A (H1N1) virus, hand-foot-and-mouth disease in children, and measles virus.
• In the Agricultural Field: It is used to extract DNA from crop and plant samples for genetic improvement, variety identification and disease monitoring, helping agricultural scientists cultivate excellent varieties and improve the yield and quality of crops.
• In the Field of Food Safety: It can detect pathogens and genetically modified components in food to ensure food safety. For example, it can extract and detect the nucleic acids of pathogenic microorganisms such as Salmonella and Escherichia coli in food.
• In the Forensic Field: When used in conjunction with special magnetic bead reagents for extracting nucleic acids from forensic samples, it can purify high-quality DNA from materials of different sources such as cigarette butts, hair roots, cartilage, nails, and blood stains, providing strong support for forensic identification.
• In the Field of Environmental Science: Environmental scientists use it to extract microbial DNA from water samples, soil samples and other environmental samples to evaluate environmental health and biodiversity and understand the types and distribution of microorganisms in the environment.

Advantages

• High Efficiency: It can process a large number of samples in a short time, improving the experimental efficiency and shortening the research cycle. For example, some nucleic acid automatic extractors can process 96 samples in only 30 – 45 minutes.
• Accuracy: Through precise temperature control, liquid flow control and mechanical movement, it reduces human operation errors and improves the accuracy and repeatability of nucleic acid extraction, ensuring that the quality and purity of the extracted nucleic acids meet the requirements of the experiment.
• High Degree of Automation: It can automatically complete the entire process of nucleic acid extraction, reducing human intervention, lowering the operational difficulty and work intensity of laboratory personnel, and also reducing the risk of cross-contamination caused by human operations.
• Good Safety: It adopts a closed design, reducing the contact between samples and the external environment, lowering the risk of cross-contamination, and avoiding the risk of aerosol contamination caused by up-and-down vibration or pipetting and mixing during the separation process.
• High Flexibility: It is applicable to various types of biological samples, such as blood, tissues, cells, viruses, etc., and can also be compatible with many different brands of nucleic acid extraction kits, which can meet the needs of different experiments.
• High Result Stability: As long as the instrument operates normally and follows the standard procedures, the quality and yield of the nucleic acids extracted each time are relatively stable, which is beneficial to the stable progress of subsequent experiments and the accurate analysis of results.

Disadvantages

• Expensive Instruments: Generally, nucleic acid automatic extractors are relatively expensive, which has certain requirements for the laboratory’s budget and limits the purchase by some laboratories.
• Requirements for Samples: The instrument has certain requirements for the quality and volume of samples. If the samples do not meet the requirements, the extraction effect and yield may be affected.
• Dependence on Electricity and Supporting Reagents: It requires a stable power supply to operate normally, and usually needs to use specific supporting nucleic acid extraction kits. The cost of the kits is also high, and the cost of consumables is a considerable expense in the long term.
• Difficult Fault Repair: Due to its high degree of automation and complex internal structure, once a fault occurs, it is relatively difficult to troubleshoot and repair, which may affect the experimental progress, and the repair cost is also high.
• Limited Throughput: Although there are instruments with different throughputs available, for some situations where a very large number of samples need to be processed, it may be necessary to operate multiple instruments simultaneously or choose larger high-throughput equipment, increasing the cost and space requirements.