Figure 2
The robotic plate-imaging system in operation. A total of 28 plates can be placed on the translation stage at any one time, with the images being made available via a secure ftp site as soon as an individual plate has been completed. The process is part of the high-throughput crystallization screening pipeline at HWI and operates completely automatically, requiring only placement of the 1536-well plate on the translation stage where the position is automatically indexed. Chemical data are linked to the images through a database. One of the students involved with the project, Nicholas Furlani, is shown placing a plate on the imaging robot. In a more accessible application of this program, students would not have to be physically present in the HWI laboratory, as the robotic processes and data dissemination would allow the students to gain access to the image data from remote locations. |