Robotic Instrumentation to Establish Workflows for Systematic Cell-Based Analyses.

我们的项目名为“机器人仪器建立基于系统细胞分析的工作流程”，要求获得一个机器人仪器来自动化处理活细胞，这些活细胞通常用于实验中，以研究单个细胞水平的基本生物过程。这个机器人仪器将被一个由成熟的和新兴的研究人员组成的团队使用，他们的研究项目旨在定义协调复杂细胞过程的生化机制，如细胞内调节信息的传递、细胞间的通信、细胞内不同部位之间细胞成分的运输，以及细胞如何对环境的变化做出反应。申请团队已经确定了一个共同的机会，通过大幅提高我们实验工作的吞吐量和准确性来改变我们的研究策略，从而加快我们的发现步伐。在这方面，机器人仪器将能够在细胞培养皿中电镀和操作活细胞，每个细胞培养皿中有多达384个单独的孔，大大超过我们目前手动操作的容量和精度。事实上，对于我们的许多研究应用，我们的实验吞吐量将增加100-1000倍，这将提供令人兴奋的新机会。例如，我们将能够筛选数千种化学物质的文库，以确定调节基本细胞过程的特定化合物。类似地，我们将能够进行针对数千个基因的基因筛选，以确定可以靶向调节这些过程的单个基因。除了提供新的研究工具，以前所未有的精度研究基本细胞过程之外，这些研究将为确定治疗疾病的药物的新靶点提供希望，这些疾病的过程是由受这些疾病影响的个体的特定基因突变改变的。通过采用共同的实验工作流程，该计划还将极大地加强申请实验室之间的合作，并为大批学员（过去6年在申请实验室约有250名学员）提供无与伦比的最先进仪器培训机会。总体而言，预计使用机器人仪器实现自动化工作流程的好处将包括获取与复杂生物过程基本机制相关的生命科学领域的新知识，为生物技术和制药工业提供新产品，服务或程序的潜力，以及为这些行业或学术、政府或私营部门实验室的研究人员培训高素质人才。

Our project entitled “Robotic Instrumentation to Establish Workflows for Systematic Cell-Based Analyses” represents a request to acquire a robotic instrument to automate the handling of living cells that are routinely used in experiments to study fundamental biological processes at the level of individual cells. This robotic instrument will be used by a team of established and emerging researchers with active research programs directed at defining the biochemical mechanisms that orchestrate complex cellular processes such as the transmission of regulatory information in cells, communication between cells, the transport of cellular components between different sites within cells, and how cells respond to adapt to changes in their environment. The applicant team has identified a shared opportunity to embrace new technology to transform our research strategies by dramatically increasing the throughput and accuracy of our experimental work to accelerate our pace of discovery. In this respect, the robotic instrument will enable the plating and manipulation of living cells in cell culture dishes with up to 384 individual wells in each cell culture dish to dramatically exceed the capacity and precision of manipulations that we currently perform manually. In fact, for many of our research applications, our experimental throughput will be increased by 100-1000-times which will provide exciting new opportunities. For example, we will be able to screen libraries of thousands of chemicals to identify specific compounds that modulate fundamental cellular processes. Similarly, we will be able to perform genetic screens that target thousands of genes to identify individual genes that can be targeted to modulate these processes. In addition to yielding new research tools to study fundamental cellular processes with unprecedented precision, these studies will offer the promise of identifying new targets for drugs for treating diseases where these processes are altered by mutations in specific genes of individuals affected by these diseases. By adopting common experimental workflows, this initiative will also dramatically strengthen collaboration between the applicant labs and provide unrivalled training opportunities on state-of-the-art instrumentation for a large cohort of trainees (~250 trainees in applicant labs in the past 6 years). Overall, it is expected that the benefits to be realized with the implementation of automated workflows using the robotic instrumentation will include the acquisition of new knowledge in life science fields related to the fundamental mechanisms of complex biological processes, the potential for new products, services or procedures for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, as well as training of highly qualified personnel for employment in these industries or as researchers in academic, government or private sector labs.