Design flexible laboratory

Flexible Laboratory Design within the Constraints of Safety... 

Data of the behavior of chemical reactions are obtained from laboratory units designed for or adapted to the purpose, or from pilot plant or commercial units. The larger units have the advantages of more instrumentation and controls but have less flexibility. Fundamentally what is determined is the time dependence of composition or pressure, or some measurement that can be related to these properties, and of the temperature. 

The Ventana 320 is designed to be used only with detection reagents, enzymes, chromogens, and counterstains supplied by Ventana, but it allows the use of primary antisera not marketed by the company. To use such antisera, however, the company requires purchase of Ventana pipeters and bar codes for each individual antisera. Although this limits a laboratory s ability to be flexible, it assists in assuring quality control of reagents. 

In order to reduce costs and increase the flexibility of HCS readers, it is to be expected that academic laboratories will assemble automated microscopes themselves. Hopefully this will be done with the Open Source hardware (OSHW) model, allowing other laboratories to reproduce the design (http //www.open-hardware.org) (15, 16). 

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