Sample Submission

4Sample preparation and transport to our laboratory

We successfully receive samples from all over the world. If the following guidelines are followed then no problems should occur.

Check list.

Plate type for DNA samples is specified below.
Enough DNA volume has been added to each well at the right concentration specified.
A minimum of one empty well per 96 well plate or four empty wells per 384 well plate are required for our negative template controls.
Plate map file has been emailed to KBiosciences in advance, indicating empty wells and optionally your subject IDs.
Each plate is permanently barcoded or clearly labeled and this must match the name in the Plate map file. The maximum name length is 15 alphanumeric characters.
A note with your name, department and sample concentration is included in the package.

A delay to your order may occur if these guidelines are not carried out.

Acceptable plate type*

  • Any 96 PCR compatible plates
  • Any 96-well V bottom plate
  • 0.5ml deep well Costar plates
  • 0.5ml Greiner deep well plates
  • 384 square well plates from Greiner, Abgene or Nunc

*Mouse tails extractions to be sent in using 0.8ml heat sealable plates

We are unable to accept 96-well plates above 0.8ml volume as these do not fit onto our robotics. If this is unavoidable we are happy to transfer your samples to a robotic friendly plate. Unfortunately, this is time consuming and will incur an additional charge.

If your plate is not listed, then please let us know.

DNA volume requirements

We require a minimum of 1.5ul of DNA at 3.3ng/ul (when quantitated by Picogreen analysis or 7ng/ul if quantitated by spectrophotometry) per SNP assayed. Please also allow an extra amount for pipetting with robotics. Typically an over volume of 5ul is required. We can deal with less but prefer no to if it is avoidable

Plate sealing

The most common problem we have is due to the inappropriate sealing of microplates.

We strongly recommend the use of a sealing system capable of sealing each individual well. Generally speaking the use of sticky seals is NOT sufficient. We have had a number of cases of sticky sealed plates, where the samples have arrived and the whole plate of DNA has leaked, resulting in bad cross contamination. An example of this can be seen below.

An example of a test shipped plate from one of our customers demonstrating the leakage caused by inadequate plate sealing.



To overcome this problem we recommend the use of one of two techniques.

Heat sealing
The use of a thermal weld achieved by an automated or semi-automated heat sealer is highly recommended. KBiosciences is a leading supplier of plate sealing instrumentation and recommends use of either the Flexi seal or eFLY heat sealers. Should you wish for more information on the purchase of either of the two sealers then please do not hesitate to conatct us.

The use of the Kube plate sealer is a highly robust way of ensuring no sample leakage (more info here).

flrShould such a sealer not be available then the FLY semi-automated thermal sealer is a reliable lower cost alternative (more info here)













Cap Mat type sealing

The use of cap mat sealing is a suitable alternative should heat sealing not be available. A number of acceptable products exist from many suppliers. In general these will all work adequately. We strongly advise to not overfill the wells with capmats as the expansion of the ice has enough force to pop the seal off resulting in cross contamination.

Whichever technique you choose we are more than happy to accept test shipments to ensure that your precious samples are not lost from untested shipping conditions

Plate labeling

Each plate must be barcoded or clearly labeled using a permanent marker pen and this must match the name in the Plate map file. (Physical plate label = Plate map name)

The maximum name length is 15 alphanumeric and under score ( _ ) or dash ( - ) characters. Please avoid space, comma or full stop characters.

If a seal hides the well location identifiers then please mark the A1 corner.

We are quite happy to accept plate names as short as 1 character. It is better to call a plate "1" rather than "Plate1" because we know it is a plate and a short name will make your result file more readable.

If you are numbering your plates and have more than ten then a leading zero like "P01" would be better than "P1" just in case you wish to sort your data in Excel otherwise "P10" would be sorted before "P2"

Plate packaging

Please print out the address on this linked page and attach it to your package.

We have encountered problems when plates are sent to us in stacks without any protection between them, plates can pierce each other. To overcome this problem, please use a cardboard spacer between plates and use bubble wrap around the plates.




Dry ice
If you are not happy with your seal quality, then you could send your plates to us in dry ice to prevent leaking. Please do not send packages on dry ice to arrive at the weekend as we will not get to them until Monday!