Equipment

Liquid handling and miniaturisation

• Robotic liquid handler, µL–mL scale — Opentrons Flex, with four stackers and 1-, 8-, and 96-channel heads.
• Non-contact dispenser, nL scale — Revvity FlexDrop Plus.
• Bulk 8-channel dispenser — Thermo Multidrop Combi, for rapid microplate filling and cell dispensing.

These prepare plates, add reagents, make dilution series, and miniaturise assays, in formats from single-well vessels to 1536-well plates.

Microorganism handling

• Microbial colony picker — Singer PIXL.
• High-density microbial array transfer — Singer ROTOR+.

The PIXL and ROTOR+ pick and replicate colonies in high-density arrays.

Incubation and biosafety

• 2 × class II biological safety cabinets — LaboGene MARS.
• 3 × incubator shakers — Infors Multitron. One supports plate cultivation and shakes up to 72 microtiter plates or 48 deep-well plates at a time, with humidity control.
• Static incubators, 30 °C and 37 °C — Thermo.

Molecular biology

• 6 × thermal cyclers — Thermo ProFlex, for PCR and DNA assembly:
  • 3 × 3×32-well (three independent blocks; up to 3 programs per machine);
  • 2 × 96-well (1 program per machine);
  • 1 × 384-well (1 program per machine).

Cell lysis and sample disruption

• High-pressure homogenizer, 3–15 mL batches — Avestin EmulsiFlex-B15.
• High-pressure homogenizer, continuous 1–5 L/h — Avestin EmulsiFlex-C5.
• Probe sonicator — Qsonica Q125.

This equipment supports cell disruption, lysate preparation for cell-free work, protein purification, and sample processing from small batches to litre scale.

General laboratory equipment

• Superspeed centrifuge — Thermo Sorvall LYNX 6000.

Measurement and screening

• Multimode microplate reader — Thermo Varioskan LUX: absorbance, fluorescence, luminescence, and AlphaScreen, with integrated temperature control, shaking, and O₂ and CO₂ control for cell-based assays.
• Colony imaging and quantification — Colony Cam Vogue, a bench-top microbial plate imager for high-throughput phenotyping and quantitative, time-lapse colony analysis.

We use these instruments for plate-based growth measurements, reporter and biochemical assays, compound screens, and high-throughput phenotyping, including chemical-genetics and microbial-interaction experiments. We validate each assay for the specific project.

Cell-free expression

• Cell-free bacterial expression system. This lysate-based system rapidly prototypes bioparts without cloning DNA into cells or purifying the protein. It transcribes DNA elements into mRNA and translates the mRNA into protein. We measure protein output on the Varioskan LUX through a fluorescent, luminescent, or chromogenic signal.

Equipment coming up

• Automated cell imaging system — brightfield and fluorescence imaging for live-cell analysis, time-lapse experiments, tiled scans, Z-stacks, and image analysis.
• High-content screening system — a confocal high-content imager for plate-based phenotypic screening.
• Automated plate incubator-shaker — simultaneous incubation and robotic handling of up to 32 microtiter plates.
• Integrated automated plate workflow — a robotic arm linking the colony picker, liquid handler, Colony Cam Vogue, plate incubator-shaker, and plate reader. This will allow up to 32 96- or 384-well plates to be incubated and monitored over time in parallel — nearly 13,000 wells at the 384-well format.

Biosafety authorisation

We have installed the safety cabinets and supporting equipment for BSL2 work and are finalising formal authorisation. We can start BSL2 work after we receive authorisation and complete a project-specific safety review.