Housed in the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Computational and Integrative Biology Facility at 38 Sidney Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Research Laboratory Automation Group carries out high-throughput sample processing, laboratory robotics and protocol development. This is a flexible facility designed to extend the benefits of laboratory automation to a diverse user group and to assist in the execution of a variety of projects that require large-scale support. To make best use of the instrumentation, the facility is staffed between the hours of 6:00 am and 10:00 pm on weekdays and 8:00 am and 8:00 pm on weekends. Present equipment includes a Genetix Q-bot colony picking robot, a Cellomics ArrayScan multi-well imaging system, a Perkin-Elmer TopCount NXT multi-well luminometer/scintillation spectrometer, a Beckman-Coulter Biomek FX and a Beckman-Coulter Sagian Core System.

The Genetix Q-bot is a versatile instrument with plate-stacking, plate-handling and lid-removal abilities that enable long, unattended colony-picking runs. The Q-bot generally picks 18,000 individual colonies and inoculates them into 96 or 384-well plates, in a four-hour time span. The Cellomics ArrayScan is a robotic arm-enabled instrument with automated image acquisition, analysis and data management for use in high-throughput GFP and population analysis. The Perkin-Elmer TopCount NXT allows analysis of radioisotopic and luminescent samples in a 96 or 384-well format. Using manually loaded stackers, up to 40 plates, or 15,000 samples, can be read, unattended, using this 12-detector system.

The Beckman-Coulter Biomek FX and Sagian Core Systems are two related instruments that carry out the bulk of our liquid-handling exercises. The Biomek FX has a 384-well pipetting head with a stacker carousel plate feeding system. The Sagian Core System consists of a dual-arm Biomek FX, two plate carousels capable of holding up to 360 plates, a plate sealer, barcode labeler, Multi-Drop bulk liquid dispenser and tip lift all connected via a 3 meter rail and ORCA robotic arm.

Recent projects of the group have included the construction and analysis of million clone cDNA libraries through colony picking, clone pooling, plasmid preparations, mammalian cell transfections and screening, the replication and pooling of a BAC library resource provided by the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and the creation of a Psuedomonas aeruginosa transposon insertion library. The automation group also serves as a key partner in meeting the liquid handling needs of the MGH Microarray Facility and other groups in the Center for Computational Integrative Biology.