FAQs

Unlike alternative methods, we never need to isolate a single cell into a well by itself. The cells are kept in a flask-like culture environment, which allows the entire population to share a contiguous media volume. This unique feature leads to improved viability and proliferation of single cells. We confirm monoclonality within our array using image-based analysis and isolate monoclonal colonies without any fluidic pressure, which drastically improves post-isolation outgrowth of your clones.

While you can isolate single cells, we recommend letting single cells grow into colonies prior to isolation. After isolating colonies across the 100 cell lines, we have qualified that the majority of clones can be propagated downstream, so a single 96-well plate can yield multiple cell lines for experimentation. Contact us to find out why monoclonal colony isolation offers significantly better clonal viability compared to single cell isolation.

While the number of clones can depend on the cell type and any perturbations you perform on the cells prior to cloning, you can be confident that the combination of our array’s optimal growth conditions and the ability to isolate monoclonal colonies will provide you with significantly more viable clones than alternative methods. Most of our customers are generating 100s and even 1000s of viable monoclonal colonies from just one array, ensuring ample opportunity for identifying the best clone, rather than settling for any clone.

Standard sorting and dispensing techniques require growing and working with millions of cells to provide single cell starting points for cell line development. Biology dictates that those single cells will then suffer from the expected low viability since they are isolated from other cells in culture.

Not only does the CellRaft AIR require many less cells for operation (less than 50K on average per array), the proprietary CellRaft allows segregated single cells to maintain flask-like culture conditions on the array until they develop into your validated target of interest. That target is then automatically isolated into a 96-well plate, providing not only a shorter and easier workflow but a significantly larger number of viable targets for your downstream research.  

With standard limiting dilution, it can take as much as four weeks to develop a colony that will be exceedingly difficult to track and trace back to its single cell of origin. It will also require many hands-on hours, plastic consumables, and a large volume of media in that process.

The CellRaft AIR system can reduce this workflow by as much as 50% with a standard clone development time of two weeks. This includes imaging and analysis of every clone with visual tracking back to the single cell of origin. The system will also reduce consumable and media usage by more than 80% on average during these standard workflows.

In addition, the CellRaft technology will also allow you to keep your cells in flask-like culture until the colony develops, and then isolate the validated colony. This change in workflow will not only create more healthy culture targets but significantly improve their downstream viability.

We have validated adherent cell lines and suspension cell lines in 2D and 3D models. Over 100 cell types have been validated on the system.

The system does not use any fluidics.

The CellRaft AIR System does not require any daily maintenance or cleaning. As with any piece of equipment critical to your work, we recommend one of our annual service contracts, which includes an annual onsite preventative maintenance visit.

Instrument size: width: 27” | depth: 20” | height: 20”

Bench space required for instrument and computer: width: 40” | depth: 26” | height: 26”

The system comes with three fluorescent channels (blue, green, and red) plus brightfield.

Blue DAPI, Hoechst: Excitation 379 – 401 nm | Emission 412 – 453 nm

Green FITC, GFP: Excitation 461 – 489 nm | Emission 498 – 548 nm

Red mCherry, Texas Red: Excitation 559 – 591 nm | Emission 603 – 805 nm

Yes. Find more information on analysis capabilities on our CellRaft Cytometry software page.