ÄIO
Empowering sustainable development with flowbot® ONE
Strain engineering supported by flowbot ONE
ÄIO, an Estonia-based biotech company, is developing sustainable alternatives to palm oil, coconut oil, and animal-based fats through their innovative fermentation technology. They do so by valorising different side streams, such as sawdust, from the wood industry, and lactose permeate from the dairy industry.
Their key to creating an efficient and secure workflow has become the flowbot ONE liquid handler.
Our work is very dynamic, so we need a lot of flexibility. The workflow depends on which strain we are working with. Some protocols need to be repeated more than others. Because our workflow is not always linear, we need to have an adaptable robot as well with a simple setup. We got that in the flowbot ONE.”
An easy way of getting an extra pair of hands
With Head of Strain Engineering Luísa Czamanski Nora, PhD, in the driver’s seat, she and her team members, Robert Puhk and Tommaso Tagliani, add new pieces of DNA to the genome of their yeast to generate new strains. That enables the production of different types of fat and oils.
This is where the flowbot ONE comes into the picture.
In collaboration with Lanmer, the flowbot ONE distributor in the Baltics, flowbot ONE was introduced to ÄIO who could easily envision its user-friendly drag and drop setup in their lab, which was in hard need of an extra pair of hands.
With Luísa Czamanski Nora as the only strain engineer at the project at that time, the most important factor was that she could learn it quickly and be comfortable with setting up protocols by herself.
“I chose the flowbot ONE after I was shown how user-friendly it is. That was the major deciding factor. Back then, I was alone doing all the metabolic engineering projects at ÄIO, and I needed the learning curve to be fast which it was, as expected,” says Luísa Czamanski Nora.
ÄIO uses flowbot ONE to automate liquid handling in all their molecular biology protocols. In fact, they run around 10 different protocols on it which they seamlessly switch between.
“Especially PCR and minipreps. seem to be ideal for the flowbot ONE. But it’s very easy to switch between the protocols so we can use it for most of our pipetting. All it takes is placing different labware inside the robot and clicking ‘execute’ in the program you want to run. Having such a flexible robot is key to keeping our workflow efficient and simple. We didn’t have to change a lot when we implemented the robot. It just does it for us and then that’s it,” Luísa Czamanski Nora explains.
Especially PCR and minipreps. seem to be ideal for the flowbot ONE. But it’s very easy to switch between the protocols so we can use it for most of our pipetting. Having such a flexible robot is key to keeping our workflow efficient and simple. We didn’t have to change a lot when we implemented the robot. It just does it for us and then that’s it.
Gaining a competitive advantage
With a vision of having a full library of strains that can be tailor-made for clients, this means a lot of new strains to test.
Food is the main agenda at ÄIO, but they are also looking into cosmetics and household chemicals.
“Our work is very dynamic, so we need a lot of flexibility. The workflow depends on which strain we are working with. Some protocols need to be repeated more than others. Because our workflow is not always linear, we need to have an adaptable robot as well with a simple setup. We got that in the flowbot ONE,” says Luísa Czamanski Nora and adds;
“We have to be able to focus on engineering and innovation to stay ahead. Now that we know that we can rely on the flowbot ONE for the manual work, we can spend our time on more fun tasks such as designing constructs or discussing experiments. It’s cool to have the robot running in the background while I’m planning the next experiment.”
The flowbot ONE has a lot of special features that can optimize data quality such as bottom touch, contact aspiration, mixing in multiple steps and total volume transfer. Luísa Czamanski Nora uses them all.
“I use them all and it’s very easy to tick the box of the features I want. Especially bottom touch, contact aspiration and the mixing function are great for us because we use liquids of different viscosities,” she explains and finishes;
“My favourite feature is aliquoting. It’s so simple and robust, and it can reuse tips so we can save plastic. If I were doing the pipetting manually, I wouldn’t dare reuse tips because of contamination risks. But with flowbot ONE, we know our samples are safe.”
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About ÄIO
Since 2022, ÄIO has been on a mission to develop sustainable alternatives to animal fats, palm, and coconut oil. By introducing environmentally friendly microbial lipid products to the market, they aim to evoke a turn of mind towards more responsible production and consumption. Their biotechnology solution utilizes proprietary yeast, which converts various side streams into value-added ingredients rich in lipids, proteins, and antioxidants.