Newcastle University

Project:

Development and application of high-throughput approaches for yeast genetics

Project Leader(s): David Lydall
Staff: Steven Addinall, Darren Wilkinson, Morgan Taschuk, Amanda Greenall, Anil Wipat, Conor Lawless
Homepage: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/lydallab/Robots.html

We use robots to perform high-throughput, systematic, yeast genetics.  An S and P Robotics, Biomatrix 3, colony handler and a Beckman Biomek FX liquid handler are used for handling yeast and an SPimager is used for photography.

The Biomatrix 3, carries picking heads that transfer from 1 to 1536 colonies from agar plates to solid or liquid media. The Biomatrix 3 is a equipped with a 192-plate stacker, a camera and bar code reader.

A Beckman Biomek FX robot is used for liquid handling.  The FX uses a magnetic pin tool to dilute and spot saturated yeast cultures onto agar plates.  The FX stacker can process up to 189 plates and uses a bar code reader to track movements.

We use a Robot Object Database to keep track of colony movement, automated image analysis to measure growth, and statistics to examine the data generated.