As those of skill in the art can appreciate, an automated pipetting system is generally a device that performs programmed transfers of liquid between preselected groups of containers. Laboratory manuals tools called pipettes, used by lab workers and employed in robotic systems alike, are commonly used in application for molecular biology, analytical chemistry, medical tests, and other fields, to transport a measured volume of liquid. As those of skill in the art can appreciate, while such conventional systems for testing are substantially well developed, they are generally engineered to handle liquid samples and are not particularly well adapted for other materials.
For example, there are other applications that require the capture of solid specimens for archiving, profiling, monitoring, testing, or other purposes. A common example is in the food and environmental sciences, where samples of solid material, such as the intact muscle mass of an animal, is desired to be sampled. Another is in a medical setting, where a biopsy might be desired from a medical sample. With solid samples, the sample texture can vary significantly, such as for example having soft, hard, dry, moist, oily, and/or viscous forms. These and other characteristics create substantial difficulties with known collection systems and apparatus.
In addition to just the physical issues with collection of samples, there are also additional requirements such as turn-around time per sample, convenience of use, or independent sampling events that are important in the context of the hardware solution. As such, the hardware solid sampling solution should be reasonably affordable for the relevant application, relatively easy to assemble and use by skilled persons, and preferably disposable to allow isolated sampling incidents and potentially very short lag-time to process multiple samples back-to-back. Currently, certain biopsy punches are available for solid samples, but most of the foregoing issues are not addressed by such hardware, including the problem that they are not particularly ideal for quick turnaround time applications, lacking good ways of ensuring the captured sample is retained, and not providing an easy manner of releasing the captured samples.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide systems, methods, and modes for sampling of solid or substantially solid materials for food, environmental and related sciences, and for the biological, chemical, medical and related fields.