Development of an automated AmpliSeq™ library building workflow for biological stain samples on the Biomek^® 3000

Here, we present the development of an automated AmpliSeq™ (ThermoFischer, MA, USA) workflow for library building using the Biomek^® 3000 Laboratory Automation Workstation (Beckman Coulter Inc., CA, USA), in which the total volume of PCR reagents and reagents for library preparation are reduced by one-half. The automated AmpliSeq workflow was tested using 43 stain samples (blood, bone, muscle tissue, semen, swab, nail scrape and cigarette butts) collected from crime scenes. The sequencing data were evaluated for locus balance, heterozygous allele balance and noise. The performance of libraries built with the automated AmpliSeq workflow using one-half of the recommended reagent volumes were similar to the performance of libraries built with the recommended (full) volumes of the reagents.