Academia Catching up to Industry: How Advanced Liquid Handling is Enhancing Basic Research

摘要

In the post genomic era, academic research is advancing beyond the scope of single gene or protein studies. Understanding systems biology and quantitative chemical biology has become the expected goal of research. Researchers are now conducting high-throughput chemical perturbation, RNA interference (RNAi) and gene expression studies. To enable these high-throughput screens (HTS), advanced liquid handling robotics, such as those that are in industry, are required [1]. Advances in robotics have dramatically increased the efficiency and scalability by which researchers can conduct experiments through the use of high-throughput liquid handling instrumentation. Such high-throughput approaches were typically only available to industrial laboratories for drug research and limited for genome sequencing projects at the academic level. The establishment of the National Institute of Health's (NIH) roadmap initiative's Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network (MLSCN) [2] has made liquid handling and detection equipment widely available for use in basic research by academic institutions.