Available in a broad and vast range to choose from, Pipette tips can help you handle your sample more precisely and achieve more accurate results. However, you should carefully choose a suitable tip type for your pipette and situation. If you’re not careful, the precision and accuracy of even the best-calibrated pipette can be eliminated. This depends on the nature of your experiment and conditions that the wrong kind of tips can make your pipette contaminated, lead to waste of expensive reagents, or in the worst case, harm you physically in the form of repetitive stress injury (RSI). If you’re new to this and have no idea about choosing one, this guide will help you get an insight into different types of pipette tips so you can rid yourself of costly experimental errors. There are so many different kinds of tips to choose from. (Lab Clinics)
Types Of Pipette Tips:
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Standard Tips:
Standard tips are multi-purpose tips for numerous applications in laboratories that can fulfill various performance requirements ranging from greater accuracy to high tolerance reagent dispensing. These tips are designed to fit almost all kinds of pipettes. However, their shapes and sizes may vary from company to company. They are also available in Sterile form for applications demanding the highest level of purity and sterility.
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Sterile Filter Tips:
Sterile Filter tips are helpful when performing experiments on samples sensitive to cross-contamination or if there is a risk of sample contaminating the lower part of the pipette. The filter in these tips keeps the liquid from accidentally spattering on the inside of the pipette. It also prevents aerosols from going through the pipette tip cone during pipetting. These 200ul filter tips are ideal for genetic studies, forensics, PCR, and radioisotope sampling because their applications require a low volume. They are available with a self-sealing barrier or standard filter, which function to prevent cross-contamination.
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Extended length pipette tips:
These tips provide you with a bit of extra length so you can easily access the bottom of test tubes, reagent bottles, flasks, and other vessels without accidentally touching your pipette against the side of the vessel. This provides you with greater security to protect samples and virtually wiped out the chances of carryover contamination. With the longer tip length of Extended length tips, you can reach the bottom of long or narrow vessels that is not possible with standard tips.
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Low retention pipette tips:
When selecting a pipette tip, low retention is a crucial characteristic. Low-retention tips function just as their name suggests. They retain low levels of liquid. You must have noticed that while using standard pipette tips, a little bit of liquid might remain left after dispensing. Low-retention tips prevent this from happening due to the presence of a hydrophobic plastic additive in their manufacturing material that keeps the liquid from sticking inside the tip. They provide a significant reduction in sample loss due to adhesion, improved sample delivery, and conservation of expensive reagents. Since most people are unaware of Low retention tips, we’ve made a guide that will all the information you need to know about them:
What are low retention tips?
Modified to reduce the adhesion of DNA, enzymes, proteins, cells, and other viscous materials to the tip’s surface, Low retention tips provide higher precision and accuracy than other pipette tips. They are also called low binding tips and are one of the best pipette tips. The polypropylene material has a chemically or physically altered surface, reducing the sticking or binding of samples to the plastic surface. This allows more economical use of rare or expensive samples and provides maximum recovery of valuable specimens. With optimal and stable liquid recovery, pipetting accuracy and precision are improved due to the reduction of inconsistent sample retention in the tip. These 200ul Low retention filter tips are especially beneficial for the pipetting of detergent-containing solutions, e.g., PRC master mixes, buffers, or enzyme solutions. (Thermo Fisher Scientific)
To wrap up:
Now that you know about all the different kinds, you can select a suitable tip for your experiment. For products like standard and 200ul low retention filter tips, visit Molecular Biology Products.
Works Cited
Lab Clinics. “How to Choose the Right Pipette Tips for your Experiment | labclinics.com.” Labclinics, 5 December 2019, https://www.labclinics.com/2019/12/05/how-to-choose-the-right-pipette-tips-for-your-experiment/?lang=en#seccion4. Accessed 8 December 2021.
Thermo Fisher Scientific. “Selecting the Right Pipette Tip.” Thermo Fisher Scientific, 30 12 2020, https://www.thermofisher.com/pk/en/home/life-science/lab-plasticware-supplies/lab-plasticware-supplies-learning-center/lab-plasticware-supplies-resource-library/fundamentals-of-pipetting/liquid-handling-selection/selecting-the-right-pipette-tip.html. Accessed 08 12 2021.
