Development of a spot picker robot for proteomics applications

Proteomics is a well established subject in medical science, which focuses on the library of proteins specific to a given bio-system, the proteome, and understanding of relationships therein. It is a very challenging task to find out the correct position coordinates of all the proteins in the 2D gel, because proteins change their position in each experiment according to their mass and charge with a lot of noise and non-linear background. The precise excision of the correct protein spots is also important for further analysis. The Spot Picker Robot can be seen as an essential tool in proteomics. It accurately locates and identifies the protein spots from 2D gels and picks and transfers the proteins for further analysis, thus enhancing data quality and reliability in the field of proteomics. The application of this robot, has helped in discovering new proteins to develop biomarkers for new diagnostic tests. It provides the necessary automation for high throughput analysis. Our spot picker robot features the non-separable wavelet based novel imaging algorithms, better design of light illumination for detection of faint, irregular & overexposed protein spots in a nonlinear background and generates more accurate reference position coordinates of a dynamic protein object. The system includes a high performance solenoid controlled surgical grade protein spot excision tool and a novel wavelet based accurate positioning algorithm to reduce the effect of jerks on the system. Even with all these features, the cost of the system is very reasonable.