advantages and disadvantages of the serial dilution agar plate technique

The basic experiment diluted fluorescein across the columns of a 96-well plate, from A1 to A10 (A11 and A12 were blank wells). The goals were to determine which parameters had the greatest effect on mixing and to reduce the time required to perform a serial dilution. With the platform’s VWorks™ software, the application allowed the total control of liquid transfer and mixing heights and speeds, which allowed efficient exploration of mixing parameters. Velocity11’s (Bravo™ Liquid Handling Platform performed serial dilution with the same pipette head as a full plate dispenser (Figure 1). To overcome these challenges, the effects of various mixing parameters of a serial dilution protocol were explored. These challenges greatly limit the throughput capacity of an automated serial dilution system. To compensate for this error possibility, longer mixing times are required, which then increases the time required to perform the serial dilution. The result is that the highest dilutions will have the most inaccurate results.

With each sequential serial dilution step, transfer inaccuracies lead to less accurate and less precise dispensing. The first is error propagation across columns or rows.

Serial dilution processes face two major challenges.

Advantages and disadvantages of the serial dilution agar plate technique