Facility for Automated High Throughput Analysis

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The pace of gene identification has greatly eclipsed the rate at which functional and structural information is generated. Considerable recent effort has therefore focused on genome-scale parallel analysis of the structure and function of numerous gene products. Many of these approaches involve analysis of large (10/3 - 10/6) sample sets, and are only practical with the aid of robotic systems that can that can reliably assemble and manipulate large sample arrays. The flexible automation afforded by contemporary robotic systems permits large scale screening of compound libraries, comprehensive two hybrid, synthetic lethal, and co-precipitation analysis with ordered libraries of yeast strains, direct identification of protein kinase phosphorylation targets, comprehensive biochemical analysis, large scale cloning, mutagenesis, and expression of proteins, and exhaustive evaluation of protein crystallization conditions. A number of researchers at Northwestern University's Evanston campus intend to pursue projects that use well-established high-throughput approaches, and would like to develop novel methodologies employing process automation. However, no shared capability for high-throughput analysis presently exists at the Evanston campus. This proposal requests funding for robotics equipment that will allow investigators at Northwestern University to pursue a broad range of automated approaches. We are requesting a Beckman BioMek FX robotic workstation equipped with appropriate extensions to perform a wide range of liquid handling and cell transfer operations. We are also requesting a Genetix Qpix2 colony picking robot, to assemble and rearray ordered libraries. The requested instrumentation will be run and managed as part of the Keck Biophysics Facility, a highly developed core resource that manages shared access to a wide range of advanced instrumentation at Northwestern.