KingFisher flex magnetic particle processor

在过去的十年或二十年里，生物科学取得了显著的、变革性的进步，这主要是由于技术和计算能力的进步，这些进步使快速确定基因组序列以及鉴定和表征生物体内的蛋白质成为可能。这不仅允许生物科学家一次研究“整个”生物系统……不仅是为了了解系统并确定最佳组件，而且还可以通过模仿自然选择的自然进化过程来改进生物系统的组件。这种“定向进化”方法提供了有用的新型催化剂（酶），这些催化剂（酶）比现有的工艺更有效，而且在工业过程中使用更“环保”。在搜索如此大量的酶时，无论是天然来源还是工程酶，都有必要分离和纯化大量具有我们感兴趣的功能的酶。自动化的机器人技术，比如在这个应用中提出的，允许数百到数千种酶并行分离，以便对它们的功能和生理特性进行更深入的分析，从而允许选择最好的酶来使用。在选择性地将我们感兴趣的酶附着在特殊修饰的磁性颗粒上后，该仪器的96个磁棒可以平行地从粗混合物中特异性地提取感兴趣的酶并清洗它们以去除污染的蛋白质，从而允许在我们的高通量筛选中对这些改进的酶进行后续分析。

Remarkable and transformative advances have taken place in the biological sciences in the past decade or two, largely driven by advances in technologies and computational capacity that have allowed rapid determination of the sequences of genomes and identification and characterization of proteins within organisms. Not only does this allow biological scientists to investigate "whole" biological systems at one time ... both to understand the system and to identify optimal components, but also it makes possible the improvement of components of the biological system by mimicking Mother Nature's evolutionary process of natural selection. Such 'directed evolution' approaches are providing, amongst others, useful new catalysts (enzymes) that are more efficient than existing processes and "greener" for use in industrial processes. When searching through such a vast collection of enzymes, whether from natural sources or engineered, it is necessary to isolate and purify large numbers of those enzymes having the functions that we are interested in. Automated robotics, such as that proposed in this application, allow hundreds to thousands of enzymes to be isolated in parallel so that more in-depth analysis of their functions and physiological properties can be undertaken, thereby allowing the very best of them to be selected for use. After selectively attaching our enzymes of interest to specially modified magnetic particles, the 96 magnetic rods of this instrument can, in parallel, specifically pull out the enzymes of interest from the crude mixtures and wash them to remove contaminating proteins, thereby allowing subsequent analysis of these improved enzymes in our high-throughput screens.