BIOPHILE-80C Storage Unit with Individual Vial Retriever

描述（由申请人提供）：生物学研究正在从分子还原论方法转变为包括整个蛋白质组或基因组的更大规模研究。高通量（HT）生物学始于人类基因组计划；越来越多的HT工具被用于蛋白质研究。鉴于蛋白质在疾病病因学和治疗中的重要性，生物学面临的主要挑战是阐明每种蛋白质的生理作用。使用HT方法，功能蛋白质组学将通过一次表达数千个蛋白质，并随后分析它们的功能特性，如亚细胞位置、相互作用伙伴、生化活性和调节修饰来解决这一挑战。所有这些研究的先决条件是全面收集全长表达就绪（FLEX）克隆。这样的集合正在使用重组克隆技术构建，这种技术允许快速转移到任何载体上，在框架内且不发生突变。这些FLEXGene克隆为研究人员提供了一个强大的资源，可以在所有实验格式和任何选择的规模下表达蛋白质。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Biological research is shifting paradigms from molecular reductionist approaches to include larger-scale investigations of the entire proteome or genome. High-throughput (HT) biology began in earnest with the Human Genome Project; increasingly HT tools are being exploited for protein research. Given the importance of proteins in disease etiology and treatment, a major challenge facing biology is the elucidation of the physiological role of every protein. Using HT approaches, functional proteomics will address this challenge by expressing proteins at a scale of thousands at a time, and by subsequently assaying their functional properties, such as subcellular location, interacting partners, biochemical activity and regulated modification. A prerequisite for all these studies is a comprehensive collection of full-length expression-ready (FLEX) clones. Such a collection is being built using recombinational cloning, which allows rapid transfer into any vector, in frame and without mutation. These FLEXGene clones provide researchers with a powerful resource that expresses proteins in all experimental formats and at any chosen scale. As a complement to the FLEX repository, a collection is being assembled of clones encoding small inhibitory RNAs (siRNAs), which specifically inhibit the expression of their cognate gene. Together with FLEXGene, these collections allow users to up- or down-regulate specific proteins to study their function in biology and disease. Furthermore, assaying sets of hundreds of clones enables investigators to conduct large-scale screens to identify key proteins or pathways. The overall objective of this project is to build a robust repository that makes these clones readily available to researchers. However, the number of collected clones (already >15,000) exceeds the ability to distribute, track and retrieve them manually. User-requested sets of 200 clones can be dispersed over 100 different plates. Without automation, the fulfillment of dozens of clone requests is untenable on a just-in-time basis. This application requests funds to obtain an automated storage unit. The BIOPHILE storage unit with individual vial retriever (IVR) uniquely combines the reliability of robotically controlled retrieval with the required clone stability of -80 x C. Bar-coded samples are robotically retrieved without opening a freezer door, thus maintaining a stable temperature. While manual distribution accommodates fewer than 100 clones per day, the BIOPHILE has a capacity of 1,200 clones per day.