Covaris M220 Ultrasonicator

The Covaris M220 Ultrasonicator provides mechanical shearing of DNA to generate tight, highly reproducible fragment distributions. Optimized shearing protocols are available for fragment sizes from 150 to 5,000 bp.

This instrument uses focused sound waves to fragment DNA in a controlled and random manner: the time exposed to the sonication determines the final fragment length, and the method of shearing ensures that no bias is present in the resulting pool of fragments — as was a concern with early enzymatic shearing methods.

The M220 is a single-sample machine, primarily designed for shearing DNA in preparation for next-generation sequencing library builds. However, the core also has an adapter for the instrument which will allow the adaptive focused acoustic (AFA) process to be applied to cells or FFPE tissue for extraction of DNA or RNA, and has assisted several researchers with that type of protocol as well.

The Covaris is available for independent use following training on the instrument; researchers are also able to submit samples for core processing. Please visit our iLab page to reserve time on the instrument or request training or sample processing.