96 Floating E-Clip style Pin Multi-Blot Replicator, on 9 mm centers, 1.58 mm Pin Diameter, 45 mm long, 2 ul Slot in Blunt Tip

Frozen Specimen Sampling Replicator, 96 spring loaded E-clip floating 2ul slot pins, 45 mm exposed pin length, with long guide pins

The unique feature of the VP 408FS2AS-1 over the original VP 408FS2AS Frozen Speciment sampler is that it has longer pins (45 mm versus 39 mm) so it can reach to the bottom of the tallest deep well microplates. As with the VP 408FS2AS we have placed a spring on each pin so that constant spring pressure is applied to each pin pressing the pin into the ice and melting it. This pressure and the ability of the slot in the pin to collect a sample of the specimen without having to melt the whole specimen is a significant advantage over other systems. See the applications tab for more details.

Manual Pin Replicators are available in 2 basic styles:

1. Replicators with Pins that are fixed into position by pressing them into an aluminum Replicator plate.
2. Replicators with Pins that “float” between two aluminum Replicator registration frames with holes in them.

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The fixed pin Manual Replicators vary in diameter from 0.457 mm to 6.35 mm and in length from 22 mm to 57 mm.

The floating pin Manual Replicators vary in diameter from 0.229 mm to 4.77 mm and in length from 12 mm to 41.5 mm.

All of our Manual Replicators have 2 guide pins outside the array that are used to register the Manual Replicators to the microplates by placing the guide pins into alignment holes drilled into a Library or a Colony Copier registration device, see the photo below.

The type of floating pins used in Manual Pin Replicators fall into two categories,

1. Tube Pins are stainless steel pins that are fixed inside tubes (cannulas) to provide greater strength to fragile small diameter pins. These tubes rest upon the lower of two thin float plates separated by a standoff.
2. E-Clip style of stainless steel pin have larger diameters which are grooved to accept an E-Clip which rests on a single thick float plate.

The Floating Tube pins vary in diameter from 0.229 mm to 0.914 mm, they also vary in the total length of the pin (from 33 to 62.2 mm) and the length of the exposed pin (from 12 to 17 to 30 to 41.5 mm) long. The exposed length terminology is used to define how far the pin is able to extend below the bottom float plate.

The volume of liquid transferred on a pin will vary with the diameter of the pin, the depth to which it is submerged into a liquid, and the speed the pin is withdrawn from the liquid. Also the surface tension of both the pin and the liquid will affect the volume transferred.

Both the Tube and E-Clip pins can be modified by cutting a very small precise slot in the tip of the pin which fills and drains by capillary action. The advantage of the slot pin is that if there are different volumes in the source wells (if the plate has been cherry picked many times) the slot pin will be less affected by the different volumes in the source plate. A slot pin, because of filling by capillary action from the bottom of the pin is able to make transfers from very small liquid volumes in source plates. Slot pins also yield a greater precision. The volume in the slot of a tube pin varies from 6 nl to 2,000 nl.

The E-clip pins range in diameter from 1.58 mm to 4.75 mm and from 22 mm exposed length to 49 mm exposed length. The E-clip pins can also be slotted and the slot volume ranges from 0.5 ul to 5 ul.

Both the Tube style pins and the E-clip pins can be coated with a hydrophobic layer to reduce non-specific binding to the pin.

Many of our customers asked us to make a replicator that could be used to obtain samples from frozen library stocks of bacteria and yeast cultures without thawing the whole plate. One of the problems encountered in collecting specimens was the the height of the frozen cultures often varied between wells. Our spring loaded E-Clip replicator solves that problem by applying equal pressure to all the pins regardless of the volume in the well. By pressing the replicator onto the frozen culture the springs keep firmly pushing all the pins into the ice at the same pressure and melting it at the same rate. The resultant liquid is then picked up in the slot and transferred to the recipient plate.

The springs compensate for wells that have different volumes of frozen culture and would not be sampled if we used a fixed pin replicator.

These replicators can be used manually with a handle or on any of the 34 robotic systems we have mounting plates for. The replicators can be autoclaved or sterilized with bleach or alcohol dipped and flamed.

The VP 408FS2AS-1 replicator has a 2 ul slot in the tip of the pin to collect the sample by capillary action.

Samples obtained from a 96 well microplate can be manually inoculated into a 384 well microplate as the VP 408FS2AS all ready comes equipped with our unique guide pin kit (BGPKL). When the guide pins on the Frozen Specimen Replicator are inserted into the proper alignment holes of a deep well library Copier (either VP 381A or VP 381B depending upon the type of recipient plate used) the sampling pins will be positioned in the middle of the appropriate wells.

We have sold over 50,000 Multi-Blot Manual Pin Replicators over the last 34 years and these versatile instruments have been used in many different applications from replicating genomic libraries, screening drugs for activity to making arrays on membranes and agar surfaces. The following links will take you pages on our old web site that list in great detail all the applications we are aware of or our customers have reported to us. In addition we have links to journal articles that describe many of these applications at this page.

• # Liquid to Liquid Transfers
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• # Liquid to Dry Surface Transfers
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• # Liquid to Membrane Transfers
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• # Making High Density Arrays
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• # Inoculation with Replicators
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• # Picking Colonies from Agar Plates
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• # Washing Pin Tools and Tips
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• # Frozen Specimen Sampler
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• # Madge Gel Loading
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• # Store DNA on Clonesaver 96 Card

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