Microarray robot

DNA technology. Because the genome of yeast had just been obtained and other genomes sequences were nearing completion everyone in the Davis laboratory was excited about what the future offered and the potential of what one could do with tools like microarrays, robots, sequencers and bioinformatics. 

The Power of Microarrays—Robotic Technology Meets Biochemistry... 

QArray 11 microarray robot equipped with 16x300 Xm solid stainless steel pins (Genetix). 

While automated grid blotting may be used to create microarrays, the linear accuracy requirements for these robots are not as strict as those found on microarray printers. This limits their use to low density arraying where... 

Others such as Macas et al. (1998) successfully adapted the Biomek 2000 (Beckman Coulter), a commonly used liquid handling robot, to prepare microarray slides using a specially constructed print head and quill pins. Up to 28 microscope slides could be placed on a work surface for printing. Biomek s HDRT head was adapted to accept microarray quill pins held between two parallel plates with holes drilled on 9-mm centers to dip into 96-well source plates. The quill pins were spring-loaded similar to the design... 

V P Scientific of San Diego, CA now offers a range of adapters, print heads, and slotted pins that can be used with the major commercially available liquid handling robots (Figure 4.12). These print heads can also be transformed into manual gridding devices if only a few microarrays are needed and where the cost of a robotic system is not warranted. 

DNA microarrays are produced using high-speed robotics on glass or nylon substrates to form probes with known identity. According to Phimister, probe stands... 

Probe cDNA which is 500 5,000 bases long, is immobilized onto a solid surface such as glass using robot spotting. Then, it is exposed to a set of probes either separately or in a mixture. This method was developed at Stanford University and is called conventional DNA microarray. ... 

Bioinformatics Robotics control, image processing, data mining, and visualization are usually used for implementation of microarray experiments. 

Fig. 1. A high-throughput platform of the carbohydrate-based microarrays. A high-precision robot designed to produce cDNA microarrays was utilized to spot carbohydrate antigens onto a chemically modified glass slide. The microspotting capacity of this system is approximately 20,000 spots per chip. The antibody-stained slides were then scanned for fluorescent signals with a Biochip Scanner that was developed for cDNA microarrays. The microarray results were subsequently confirmed by at least one of the conventional alternative assays.

Fig. 3. Schematic of staining process of SARS-CoV immunochip. (1) Spotting A high-precision robot transfers the samples, SARS-CoV proteins, and glycans of various complexities, from 96-well plate to nitrocellulose-coated glass slides. (2) Staining Before staining, the slides are rinsed with IX phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), and blocked with 1% bovine serum albumin (BSA)-PBS containing 0.05% NaN3 and 0.05% Tween-20. They are subsequently incubated with horse anti-SARS sera. The primary antibodies captured by microarrays are detected using biotinated anti-horse immunoglobulin (Ig)G, and visualized by Cy3-streptavidin.

In the microarray industry, the most commonly used techniques to pattern biologically active molecules are robotic contact printing or ink-jet printing. In general, these methods can fabricate biochips with thousands of different compounds, which can be analyzed simultaneously. The most commonly spotted biomolecules include oligonucleotides,1 proteins,2 and carbohydrates.3 Microarray-based platforms have... 

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