Whitney Ong, a joint chemistry graduate student in the Dodani and Smaldone labs at the university, explained: “My research focuses on the development of supramolecular-based sensors for anions as part of a collaborative project between the two labs I am part of. In the Dodani Lab, we are interested in anion sensing and recognition – particularly for chloride – in biological systems and the wider environment, while in the Smaldone Lab, our focus is on organic and materials chemistry, creating new polymeric materials for applications in energy storage and 3D printing.”

“Working across the two groups means I’m part of a few different projects; splitting my time between developing a hydrophobic polymer for anionic recognition and engineering fluorescent proteins for anion sensing. This doesn’t just span multiple labs and disciplines, it also requires a wide range of laboratory techniques, including cell biology approaches, which is where the PIPETBOY acu 2 comes in.”

Streamlining cell biology workflows

“The reason we are especially interested in chloride is that it is the most abundant anion in the human body – serving all sorts of functions – and its dysregulation is implicated in various diseases, such as cystic fibrosis (CF). The current gold standard for the diagnosis of CF is to analyze the sodium and chloride levels in a patient’s sweat, and so we are hoping that our chloride sensing platform could help in this detection, as well as in the diagnosis of a number of other diseases.”

“Overall, we are largely studying many of the salts in the Hofmeister series. This is so we can do comparisons and see how selective they are when we use different sensors. As part of this research, I am doing a lot of work with protein expression, mutating the binding site of a fluorescent protein to see if it will work better for chloride sensing, and trying to create a turn-on sensor. This area of cell biology is where the PIPETBOY is really helping our workflows – saving a lot of time and improving accuracy.”

Faster and safer cell culture set-up

The PIPETBOY acu 2’s combination features make it perfect to speed up workflows. It offers increased pipetting speed and sensitive liquid control using various finger pressure, with a lightweight and ergonomic design to reduce pipetting fatigue. Additionally, it has a working time of over 6.5 hours non-stop pipetting, with a fast charging time of only 3.5 hours to support even the highest throughput labs. Whitney continued: “We have three PIPETBOY pipette controllers – one red, one blue and one clear. We use them regularly for a variety of tasks when we are doing cell culture set-up, for instance to make up large volumes of cell culture media, aliquoting and dispensing reagents such as media or antibiotics, resuspensions and mixing different solutions. If we are working with volumes of liquid above 2 ml, we will always use the PIPETBOY; it’s much easier, safer and more efficient that pouring liquids between glass measuring cylinders, where there is a much higher risk of spillages or not accurately pouring out the desired volume. They fit into our workflows perfectly – everyone in the lab loves them.”