There are two primary ways to manipulate physical materials. Either by 1) transferring materials from one container to another such as pipetting from one plate to another or 2) by performing a reaction that will change one or materials into another material such as transforming a plasmid into a bacteria to form a transgenic bacteria.
Transferring material is generally handled by creating and executing a worklist which is a list of transfers from sources to destinations.
Performing reactions is handled by creating and executing a Reaction Map where the set of input materials to the reaction (reactants) form a unique association to one or more output materials (products). Whenever a reaction in a reaction map is executed, aliquots which compose the unique set of input materials (reactants) are updated to point to the output material that is associated with that reaction (products).
Note: You may want a reaction to take place immediately after a worklist is executed. The Execute Worklist tool provides a mechanism for executing a Reaction Map directly after executing a Worklist.
Note: In some cases, you may want to execute a Reaction Map without transferring any materials. For those situations, you can use the Execute Reaction Map tool to perform reactions in one or more plates without transferring materials.
Inputs: One or more plates, boxes, or tube racks containing materials (reactants)
Output: The input plates, boxes, or tube racks with the reaction outputs (products)
You can find more detailed definitions of the terms mentioned in this article in the glossary.
Prerequisites:
(required) The plates must exist in inventory
(required) A reaction map
You can find the Execute Reaction Map tool under Tools > Tool Library. Click on ‘Launch Tool’ to start using the tool.
The tool has a single step with two sections.
1. Select Reaction Maps
You need to select one or more Reaction Maps that will act on the aliquots in the plates that you will select in the next section.
The selected reaction maps will be displayed in a table in the top section.
You can remove a single reaction map from the table by clicking the delete icon in the corresponding row. You can clear all reaction maps by clicking the delete icon next to the 'Change Reaction Maps' button. You select additional reaction maps by clicking the 'Change Reaction Maps' button.
2. Select Plates
Next, you can select one or more plates on which you wish to perform the reactions.
The selected plates will be displayed in a table in the bottom section.
You can remove a plate from the table by clicking the delete icon in the corresponding row. You can clear all plates by clicking the delete icon next to the 'Change Plates' button. You select additional plates by clicking the 'Change Reaction Plates' button. You can preview the plate and its contents by clicking the eye icon.
The tool will scan all of the wells in all of the plates and attempt to match up the set of materials present in each well with the input set of materials in one of the reactions in one of the reaction maps selected in the top section. If there are materials in wells that do not match a reaction in one of the selected reaction maps, a warning will appear at the bottom indicating that no reactions will take place in these wells.
The tool will still let you proceed because there are situations where you may want to only execute a reaction on a subset of wells.
To execute the reaction maps click 'Submit' and you will be provided with a confirmation screen with links to the plates with the updated materials.
