Beckman Coulter Life Sciences debuts the future of simplified PCR cleanup and plasmid prep with the EMnetik system

Creating the industry’s first powerful workflow innovation in more than 30 years for plasmid prep and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) cleanup, Beckman Coulter Life Sciences launches the EMnetik System to semi-automate workflows while drastically reducing the amount of time required to achieve a PCR cleanup.

Image Credit: Beckman Coulter Life Sciences

Built using electromagnets, EMnetik 24 and the accompanying EMnetik PCR Cleanup Kit and EMnetik Plasmid Purification Kit uses revolutionary magnetic bead-based technology to clean nucleic acids in a stationary device.

Touchpoints to complete PCR cleanup are significantly reduced by up to 80% compared to leading spin-column products, slashing 300 touchpoints to just 50. PCR cleanup can also be achieved in 16 minutes, down from 30 minutes expediting and improving bead mixing and separation.

The small yet powerful benchtop instrument can run 1-24 samples at a time. The streamlined cleanup process and semi-automation also helps eliminate the potential for errors.

“For early lab students it can be a hard lesson learned to write on the vial, only to have the ethanol wash drastically smudge the writing,” said Dr. Brittany Niccum, Commercial Product Manager in the company’s Genomic Reagents Biotechnology Business Unit.

I remember as a young scientist the errors this created in my runs, and the frustrating time it added to the process. We’re excited to introduce this innovation and bring DNA cleanup into 21st century.”

Dr. Brittany Niccum, Commercial Product Manager, Genomic Reagents Biotechnology Business Unit

The EMnetik system offers significant updates for synthetic and molecular biology industries, which last saw a workflow update for plasmid prep and PCR cleanup in 1991. These kits have proliferated into every lab that performs basic molecular biology processes. The EMnetik system is the future of simplified PCR cleanup.

Customers praise the quick responsiveness and ease of operation when adding the instrument to their workflow. Joshua James, a Ph.D. student, commented, “We were most surprised with EMnetik's robustness. The device moved the beads to the side making it so easy to aspirate.”

Lab professionals can also get an up close and personal feel for the instrument and its revolutionary features by downloading the EMnetik 24 app available later this month, which includes an augmented reality feature to give smartphone and tablet users the option to visualize the system in their current workspace in real time.