Design and evaluation of low-cost, DIY programmable tissue processor for solvent exchange in biological sample...

Area of Science:

• Biological Imaging
• Microscopy Techniques
• Tissue Processing

Background:

• Microscopy requires tissue preparation, often involving time-consuming dehydration and rehydration steps for staining.
• Standard protocols, like those using propidium iodide (PI), are manually intensive and require significant hands-on time.
• Commercial automated tissue processors are effective but prohibitively expensive for many research laboratories.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and present an open-source, low-cost automated tissue processor.
• To reduce the manual labor and time associated with biological tissue preparation for imaging.
• To provide an accessible alternative to expensive commercial tissue processing equipment.

Main Methods:

• Designed and built a low-cost (~$400) automated tissue processor using readily available parts.
• Developed custom software enabling users to define and save automated protocols.
• Automated a multi-day propidium iodide (PI) staining protocol for various plant tissues.

Main Results:

• Successfully automated PI staining across multiple plant species and tissue types, reducing hands-on labor.
• Demonstrated comparable tissue quality between samples processed by the automated system and manual methods.
• The automated processor functions reliably across different users and experimental conditions.

Conclusions:

• The developed open-source automated tissue processor offers a practical and affordable solution for biological laboratories.
• This system significantly reduces hands-on time and labor for essential tissue preparation steps.
• Provides accessibility to automated tissue processing, benefiting a wide range of research settings.