Introduction to the Workshop
URLs Provided by Attendees

Abstracts

Mapping

Informatics

Sequencing

Instrumentation

Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues

Infrastructure

The electronic form of this document may be cited in the following style:
Human Genome Program, U.S. Department of Energy, DOE Human Genome Program Contractor-Grantee Workshop IV, 1994.

Abstracts scanned from text submitted for November 1994 DOE Human Genome Program Contractor-Grantee Workshop. Inaccuracies have not been corrected.

TURBO PCR--An Integrated Robotic System for Continuously Setting Up and Running Multiple PCR Reactions

John Meng, Don Uber, Joe Jaklevic
Human Genome Center and Engineering Division, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720

The Three Unit RoBOtic thermal cycler--TURBO PCR for short--is a multi-station thermal-cycler unit serviced by an ORCA robot unit which also services a Biomek robot unit. The ORCA robot loads the Biomek robot from an extensive hotel array containing tip racks, microtiter plates and titer-tube racks of input material. It reads bar codes from input plates and output plates as they are used, permitting material to be tracked as it passes through the system. The Biomek robot is programmed to perform the chemistry necessary to set up 96 PCR reactions in a microtiter plate. Once the reactions are set up, the ORCA passes loaded plates from the Biomek robot into the thermal cycler. It removes plates from the thermal cycler at the end of PCR runs. The ORCA hotels can hold supply quantities sufficient to service nine input plates, which may consist of either titer-tube racks or thin wall microtiter plates. The hotels may be loaded with additional inputs and supplies at any time, making it practical for the system to be run continuously. Setup and orchestration of the TURBO PCR's operations is done from an independent computer running a state-machine interpreter which communicates via shared files in the ORCA computer, the Biomek computer and the Thermal Cycler computer. Other units, such as an imaging station and a gel load-and-run station, easily connect to the interpreter, and additional units may be connected as they come on-line. The interpreter also performs data base operations and monitors the system for unit failures, keeping track of hardware operations and experimental materials.