2LabsToGo─Recipe for Building Your Own Chromatography Equipment Including Biological Assay and Effect Detection

Abstract

A complete recipe for building your own chromatography equipment from readily available materials is introduced. It combines sample separation (chemistry laboratory) with biological effect detection (biology laboratory). This hyphenation of two disciplines is necessary for prioritizing important compounds in complex samples. Among the thousands of compounds therein, it is often not clear which compounds are the important ones. On the same separation surface, additional detection of biological effects enables and guides substance prioritization. The newly developed open-source 2LabsToGo system for chemical and biological analysis is completely solvent-resistant and, due to miniaturization, environmentally friendly regarding the consumption of materials. It produces comparable results but is 10 times more compact (26 cm × 31 cm × 34 cm), 10 times lighter (6.8 kg), and 55 times less expensive (€ 1717) than current sophisticated commercial devices. As a proof of concept of the first 2LabsToGo system, the quality of different water samples was analyzed since clean water is becoming increasingly rare. In water, most of the thousands of substance signals or features can neither be identified nor classified toxicologically. However, methods that exploit this hyphenated strategy provide answers to such essential safety issues. Drinking or tap water did not show bioactive or toxic compounds, which was expected, whereas biogas or landfill water samples did. The hyphenated 2LabsToGo strategy is affordable and extremely useful for all laboratories with limited equipment but pressing challenges. It is ready to be used in various analytical tasks and applications.

African Under-Utilized Medicinal Leafy Vegetables Studied by Microtiter Plate Assays and High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography–Planar Assays

“…Recently, the open-source do-ityourself 2LabsToGo system was introduced as a one-of-its-kind development in system engineering [59], which is highly sustainable regarding resources and has very low material costs to build and install the planar assay methodology. Its functionality was proven by various applications [60]. In contrast, the in vitro assay has to be followed by bioassay-guided fractionation and chromatographic analysis, which requires much more material resources and more time for analysis.…”

Simple performance of the planar SOS-Umu-C–FLD genotoxicity bioassay shown for perfume and packaging material analysis

“…4. Moreover, the miniaturized and portable open-source 2LabsToGo system [17,22] is an excellent, sustainable instrument option with low material resource footprint and low investment costs, for both the chemistry and biology laboratory.…”

“…Although it depends on the level of automation and standardization chosen, the establishment of planar chromatography and biology laboratories, for example, can account for €160,000 in investment costs. In contrast, the miniaturized do-it-yourself open-source 2LabsToGo system [16] with investment costs of only €1717 [17] could be an excellent option to start instantly with this powerful technique. Given the fact that the current in vitro genotoxicity bioassay analysis of one sample costs more than €8000 in Germany, the investment costs of the 2LabsToGo system are amortized with one analysis.…”