Next Generation ALPHA Zebrafish Tank Washer: High Throughput with Reduced Environmental Impact

斑马鱼是脊椎动物发育和建模遗传分析的主要研究生物 人类先天缺陷和疾病。圣路易斯华盛顿大学医学院的斑马鱼设施 是一个共享使用的设施。这个5644 SF最先进的设施总共可容纳4辆近9000辆坦克 带独立循环水系统的动物饲养室。该机制为以下方面提供了最佳条件 饲养和维护多达200,000条鱼。从2011年的四个斑马鱼实验室开始，该设施 目前支持33个独立实验室的研究。目前，已有100多名研究生和本科生 学生、博士后研究员和科学家在R00、R01、 R54和P01来自美国国立卫生研究院的拨款。该基金还支持其他教育和教育机构 外展计划。该设施通过确保具有自动饲喂的优质畜牧业来实现这些计划 这将斑马鱼成年的时间减半；为实验提供野生型品系和胚胎， 冷冻保存精子，以最大限度地减少作为生命库维持的精子线的数量，进行病理检测； 维护引进品系检疫制度，提供基因组工程等研究服务， 对养殖池及其部件进行清洗消毒，确保安全高效 研究行动。 斑马鱼用户的持续增加和扩大到9000个水箱需要现代化的技术 每天清洗和消毒数百个蓄水池和养殖池的先进设备 以及鱼网，以确保斑马鱼研究的安全和高效。在这里，我们建议将 现有900 GP Walk in Washer(Tecniplast)和下一代Alpha Walk in Washer型号 (Tecniplast)。现有的900 GP洗衣机是一个原型水上运动洗衣机，有几个限制：它使用蒸汽 用管道来加热水，能源效率低，需要很长的洗涤周期，使用外部化学剂量 系统，并经常出现故障。这些低效和频繁的停机增加了体力劳动， 限制和减缓其支持的设施运行和研究活动。 Alpha型号部署了自适应清洁技术，将独立的垂直和振荡相结合 允许更高的水域覆盖率的运动。阿尔法洗衣机使用电力来加热水，更短 洗涤周期，因此更高的吞吐量，将满足斑马鱼不断增长的洗涤需求 研究人员。在洗涤周期中使用的化学物质的储存库适合机器的占地面积。运营 使用Alpha洗衣机将减少对环境的影响，洗涤周期更短，消耗更少 每个周期的化学药量。拟议的升级到现代的阿尔法步行者洗衣机将 极大地提高斑马鱼储存箱和养殖箱的洗涤能力；将满足 增加斑马鱼研究业务，还将减少该设施对环境的影响。

Zebrafish is a premier research organism for the genetic analysis of vertebrate development and modeling human birth defects and disease. The Zebrafish Facility at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is a shared-used facility. This 5,644 sf state-of-the-art facility accommodates a total of nearly 9,000 tanks in four animal holding rooms with independent recirculating water systems. The Facility provides optimal conditions for the rearing and maintenance of up to 200,000 fish. Starting with four zebrafish laboratories in 2011, the Facility currently supports research of 33 independent laboratories. Presently, over 100 graduate and undergraduate students, postdoctoral fellows and scientists carry out research in the Facility that is supported by R00, R01, R54, and P01 grants from the National Institutes of Health. The Facility also supports other educational and outreach programs. The Facility enables these programs by ensuring superior husbandry with automatic feeding that halves the time zebrafish grow to adulthood; supplying wild-type lines and embryos for experimentation, cryopreserving sperm to minimize the number of lines maintained as life stocks, conducting pathological testing; maintaining Quarantine System for imported lines, providing research services such as genome engineering, and washing and disinfecting holding and breeding tanks and their components to ensure safe and efficient research operations. The continued increase of the zebrafish users and expansion to 9,000 tanks requires modern, technologically advanced equipment to clean and disinfect, on a daily basis, hundreds of holding and breeding tanks, and tank components as well as fish nets to ensure safe and efficient zebrafish research. Here we propose replacing the existing 900 GP Walk in Washer (Tecniplast) with the next generation ALPHA Walk in Washer model (Tecniplast). The existing 900 GP Washer is a prototype aquatics washer with several limitations: it uses steam lines to heat water, is energetically inefficient, requires long wash cycles, uses an external chemical dosing system, and breaks down frequently. These inefficiencies and frequent downtimes increase manual labor, limiting and slowing down the Facility operations and research activities it supports. The ALPHA model deploys adaptive cleaning technology that combines independent vertical and oscillating movements allowing for superior water coverage. The ALPHA washer uses electricity to heat water, shorter wash cycles and thus higher throughput that would meet the continually growing washing needs of the zebrafish researchers. The reservoir for the chemicals used during wash cycles fit into the machine footprint. Operations with the ALPHA Washer would reduce environmental impact with a shorter wash cycle and consuming smaller amounts of chemicals per cycle. The proposed upgrade to the modern ALPHA Walk in Washer would dramatically improve the washing capacity of zebrafish holding and breeding tanks; would meet the needs of the growing zebrafish research operations and would also reduce the Facility’s environmental impact.