The Applied Biosystems' 7500 FAST Real-Time PCR System allows rapid quantitative PCR analysis in a 96-well plate-based format.  Powerful, five-color platform is calibrated for the broadest range of dyes available: FAM™⁄SYBR® Green I, VIC®⁄JOE™, NED™⁄ TAMRA™⁄ Cy3™, ROX™⁄Texas Red®, and Cy5™ dyes.

The 7500 FAST is located at the FWB Genomics Centre only. We also stock specific low-profile FAST 96-well plates and optically-clear lids you need for this instrument.

We have 7900HT instrument at the Genomics Centre. It features 384-well blocks for high-throughput applications and more data output (more genes and/or more samples per run). Using 384-well plates also allows you to use smaller reaction vloumes which saves you money on expensive reagents.

The system also comes with powerful and easy-to-use analysis software. The machines are compatible with most real-time PCR assays and dyes (including SYBR Green, FAM, VIC, ROX, TAMRA etc.) for gene expression, gentoyping or miRNA analysis, with laser based sample excitation.

We can supply the 384-well plates you need for the 7900HT 384-well block.

The 2100 Bioanalyser from Agilent is essentially a capillary electrophoresis machine that utilises lab-on-a-chip technology to perform many different separation assays. The assays are very quick and easy to set-up, compared to the large-scale gels normally required or these prodcures.  Applications include:

• RNA integrity analysis
• DNA separation and sizing (genotyping, PCR products, etc)
• Protein separation and sizing

Key to the technology are the Agilent LabChips, which allow analysis of up to 12 samples in a single batch. The LabChips themselves are precision glass chips with a network of fine micro-capillaries etched onto the surface. A gel consisting of linear polyacrylamide (LPA) is cast into the capillaries, then, after running buffer is added, the samples are loaded onto the chip ready for electrophoresis.

We also provide chips and reagents for use with the bioanalyser. We usually have consumables for RNA 6000 Nano, RNA 6000 Pico, DNA High Sensitivity, DNA 1000 and Small RNA kits available for you buy on a per chip basis.

The Biomek FX liquid handling robot from Beckman Coulter is a highly-flexible dual-armed automation system for performing highly-accurate parallel pipetting, and other liquid transfer techniques. It also has a Span-8 multichannel arm for cherry picking and single-well transfers, ideal for setting up assays such as PCR, qPCR, ELISAs, etc. A Stacker Carousel add-on, which can store and feed into the machine dozens of microtitre plates or tip-boxes, allows you to fully automate multi-plate transfers, (eg. library management) for true walk-away reliability. Please contact the Genomics Centre for more details on the possibilities of this robot, and if you think you can apply it to help you with your research.

 
Applications include:

• Library management (clones, oligonucleotides, compounds, etc.), dilutions, replications, sub-libraries, etc.
• High-throughput extractions (DNA, RNA, protein)
• Assay plate set-up (PCR, qPCR, ELISA, kinase, etc.) - 96-, 384-, or 1536-well plates.
• Drug discovery/compound library screening projects.

The TissueLyser II from QIAGEN uses stainless steel beads to rapidly disrupt and homogenise tissues - up to 48 samples at a time in parallel. It is very useful in extracting good quality RNA from multiple tissue samples

The MiSeq System utilizes Illumina’s sequencing by synthesis (SBS) technology with on-board cluster generation, amplification, sequencing, and data analysis all built into a single instrument. It is the ideal platform for rapid and cost-effective genetic analysis and can be used for Library QC, small RNA-seq, targeted RNA-seq, amplicon-sequencing, 16S-Metagenomics and small genome sequencing.