DATE:  April 6, 2017
TIME:  3:00PM GMT, 7:00AM PT, 10:00AM ET

The Edinburgh Genome Foundry (EGF) is a newly established facility of the University of Edinburgh and assembles built-to-order DNA constructs using a fully integrated robotic platform. The assembly of synthetic DNA has become a standard process in many scientific laboratories. The assembly protocols involve many repetitive steps and often scientists require many different versions of DNA. Therefore, this process is well suited for automation, which enables the high-throughput needed and also resulting in a lower error rate and cost saving for reagents and consumables.

Colony Picking is a key part of the synthetic biology workflow, where bacteria are used to propagate cloned DNA, or to screen DNA constructs against selective conditions. Yet, at high throughput (typically thousands of colonies per day) the task becomes too labor-intensive and error-prone to be performed by hand.

In this webinar we will describe our robotic platform and how it performs automated DNA assembly using the Golden Gate DNA assembly method. Furthermore, we present how the Molecular Devices QPix integrates into the automated production line and is used for routine high-throughput colony picking/plating. We will describe the customization of the instrument itself, as well as our collaborative efforts with Molecular Devices and our systems integrator to integrate the QPix into our extensive lab automation setup.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about the automation of DNA assembly, as exemplified using the Golden Gate assembly method

• Learn about the customization and integration of high-throughput colony picking/plating