Fully automated workstations for image acquisition and microfluidic device control.
Microfluidic devices with integrated pneumatic valves can be used for a wide range of applications, from high-throughput recombinant protein expression to immobilizing animals or single cells for long-term imaging studies. However, the requirement for custom hardware and software to control these devices has limited their adoption by biologists. We will have several fully automated setups that can be used by biologists without a need to build their own, and hope to acquire funding for Center staff to help train users and set up experiments.

For detailed descriptions of hardware, please see:
Brower et al., “An open-source, programmable pneumatic setup for operation and automated control of single- and multi-layer microfluidic devices”, HardwareX 2017.
Longwell & Fordyce, “micrIO: An open-source autosampler and fraction collector for automated microfluidic input-output”, Lab on a Chip 2019.

Workstations for microfluidic single- and double-emulsion droplet generation.
Droplet microfluidics has revolutionized protein engineering and single-cell biology. Recent work surrounding FACS-sortable double-emulsion droplets extends these applications still further, eliminating the need for custom equipment to sort and isolate cells. The Center will have 2 droplet generation stations capable of creating single- or double-emulsion droplets available for use.

For detailed descriptions and protocols for droplet generation, please see:
Feng et al., “MRBLEs 2.0: High-throughput generation of chemically functionalized spectrally- and magnetically-encoded hydrogel beads using a simple single-layer microfluidic device” Microsystems & Nanoengineering (2020).
Brower*, Khariton*, et al., “Double emulsion picoreactors for high-throughput single-cell encapsulation and phenotyping via FACS”, Analytical Chemistry (2020).

Workstations for optical trapping and single-molecule fluorescence.
Optical traps make it possible to apply force to probe chemomechanical coupling and resolve folding pathways within single macromolecules. The Center is home to cutting-edge optical trapping instrumentation capable of resolving 8 nm steps of individual kinesin motors stepping along microtubules as well as 0.3 nm steps for RNA polymerase translocating along double-stranded DNA. This instrumentation is also capable of simultaneous and spatially-coincident optical trapping and single-molecule fluorescence.

High throughput array imaging station for RNA-MAP and Prot-MAP applications.We have repurposed Illumina sequencers to carry out high-throughput fluorescence measurement applications other than sequencing. These instruments are capable of assaying millions of distinct molecular interactions directly on a high-throughput sequencing chip.