Integration of Covaris R230 for C. elegans High-Throughput Proteomics Sample Preparation

NIH's NCATS mass spectrometry team built an automated C. elegans proteomics workflow to overcome a longstanding bottleneck: the organism's thick outer cuticle makes traditional lysis methods inefficient, irreproducible, and incompatible with high-throughput screening. In this presentation, Courouble and Tao detail how Adaptive Focused Acoustics® (AFA® ) technology enabled the first successful high-throughput protein extraction from C. elegans — first on the ML230, then scaled further on the R230 across 8-well strips, 96-well, and 384-well formats. By combining R230 lysis with automated digestion on a Bravo platform and integrating TMT multiplexing, this automated C. elegans proteomics workflow reduced overall sample preparation time from two days to eight hours, decreased starting material requirements by over 250-fold, and achieved a greater than 14-fold increase in mass spec throughput — all while improving protein identification and reproducibility across life stages. The result is a sample-type-agnostic platform now expanding to adherent cells, serum, tissues, 3D organoids, and suspension cells. More info: www.covaris.com/contact-us/ automated C. elegans proteomics, high throughput sample preparation, AFA technology, Covaris R230, NCATS NIH, TMT multiplexing, 384 well plate proteomics, mass spectrometry sample prep, multicellular organism extraction, Bravo automation, ASMS 2026