The DNA Section of the Orange County Crime Laboratory (OCCL) in California, USA, has recently taken delivery of its first Air LiHa equipped Freedom EVO^® workstation for DNA quantitation and amplification reaction set-up.

Complementing the laboratory’s existing liquid displacement Freedom EVO platforms for DNA extraction, this new instrument will help to streamline the workflow and improve pipetting precision. Robert Binz, a Forensic Scientist at OCCL, explained: “We purchased our first Freedom EVO in 2010 to speed up DNA extraction. We originally chose the HID EVOlution™ because it was already optimized and validated for use with the Applied Biosystems PrepFiler^® Forensic DNA Extraction Kit (Life Technologies), and it was so successful that we purchased a second platform within a year.” 

“More recently, we began looking to acquire a new system for the quantitation, normalization and amplification steps of our workflow. As we do not use the Applied Biosystems Quantifiler^® Duo chemistry for quantitation, the HID EVOlution package was not an option. We decided that an air displacement liquid handling system was the best fit for our needs, making a Freedom EVO workstation equipped with an Air LiHa the obvious choice. Although we are only in the validation phase at the moment, the pipetting precision of the Air LiHa is very good. For 1 μl transfers we are achieving CVs of 1-5 %, dropping to 1­3 % when the volume is increased to 10 μl, which we are extremely happy with.”

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