Every super-resolution image begins as a choreography of pipetting: fix, block, antibody, wash, antibody, wash. Do a step unevenly and the flaw surfaces in the final picture, where a crease in a membrane is indistinguishable from biology. A team in China has compressed that choreography into a machine the size of a thick book, and shown its samples clear the bar set by the most punishing form of the technique.
STORM, stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy, separates features about 20 nanometres apart. It works on fixed cells whose proteins carry fluorescent antibodies. Manual staining is slow and operator-dependent; commercial autostainers are built around robotic arms and priced accordingly; cheaper open-source rigs either share tubing between reagents or need a pump for each.
MAPLES — Multi-Channel Automated Programmable Liquid Exchange System — sidesteps both. Two peristaltic pumps and an eight-channel solenoid valve block move liquid; each reagent waits in its own disposable syringe, pushed by air rather than through a shared line, with a deliberate air gap above the bath. The unit weighs 1.6 kilograms and measures 19 by 17 by 7 centimetres, and interchangeable adapters take coverslips, confocal dishes or standard slides.
Delivery error is about 3% at 500 microlitres and stays inside 3% over ten consecutive washes; dead volume holds at 7 to 12 microlitres — which matters for antibodies. Waste removal leaves under 4% behind, so three rinses cut residual reagent to 0.0064%. Human red blood cells — no organelles, a membrane that tears easily — survived 12 rinses at 1,000 microlitres per minute. STORM of the membrane-skeleton protein tropomodulin then resolved about 70 clusters per square micrometre, spaced near 80 nanometres, in the hexagonal lattice expected of that skeleton.
The strongest demonstration runs from a live cell to a fixed one. In breast cancer cells a bivalent second antibody crosslinks the immune-checkpoint protein PD-L1; time-lapse imaging showed it gathering into patches within 40 minutes. Those cells were then fixed and stained in place: blinking events per cluster rose from 13.8 to 127.4, and cluster density fell from 8.3 to 0.6 per square micrometre. In a second run, cells were filmed as calcium entered through store-operated channels, fixed at the peak, and stained for STIM1 — puncta counted in the very cell that had been filmed.
Boundaries: the comparison rests on published specifications, not head-to-head tests; throughput is one sample per unit, though several can run in parallel; and the imaging covers a handful of cell types and one tissue protocol. Fixation, antibody choice and buffer chemistry still decide whether an image is worth keeping.
What MAPLES changes is who does the washing, and how evenly. A protocol that occupies a trained pair of hands for hours becomes a file that runs the same way in every laboratory — the unglamorous condition for pictures that can be compared.
The Innovation
Experimental study
Cells
Multi-channel automated programmable liquid exchange system enables high-quality sample preparation for super-resolution microscopy
8-Sep-2026
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.