E H Theil | PubMed Health

PubMed1995

TRAMP: a software package for generating transposon maps.

TRAMP is a software package for generating transposon maps that are used for DNA sequencing. The package provides a variety of automated tools that can always be overridden by the user. The central part of the package is its selection algorithm that finds the most robust map with the smallest number of inserts. TRAMP has been in daily use by the sequencing team at LBL since it was introduced in the Spring of 1994. It is applicable to any sequencing project utilizing the directed strategy.

Algorithms↗

PubMed1991

Application of robotics and image processing to automated colony picking and arraying.

We describe a system that applies image processing and robotic techniques to automatically pick individual colonies from square petri dishes and array them in 96-well microtiter plates. Digital images of the colony distribution in the dishes are acquired using a video camera and frame buffer. Commercial image processing software is used to identify individual colonies and determine their locations. A Hewlett-Packard Microassay System robot reads the resulting coordinate file for each dish, picks cells from each identified colony and transfers the cells into a microtiter plate well. A disposable pipet tip is used as the sterile implement for colony picking. Custom holders position the dishes accurately and provide common coordinate systems for imaging and picking. The system is calibrated to account for the depth of agar in the dishes. The robot can process up to 10 dishes and 20 plates (1920 colonies) in a single run. It has successfully arrayed a cosmid library of the S. pombe genome consisting of approximately 6000 colonies in 30 petri dishes in about 40 hours of robot time. Future enhancements to the system are discussed.

Cells, Cultured↗