CSIRO Material Science and Engineering, 343 Royal Parade, Parkville VIC 3052, Australia.
Methods. 2011 Sep;55(1):73-80. doi: 10.1016/j.ymeth.2011.04.004. Epub 2011 May 6.
Turning commercial lab automation into a high-throughput centre requires an underlying process, and implementing checks to ensure that the process is working as it should. At the Collaborative Crystallisation Centre (C3), protein samples from local, national and international groups are set up in crystallisation screening and optimisation experiments with two thousand 96 well plates being set up each year. During its five years of operation, the C3 has implemented a series of enabling protocols - from simple 'reality checks' to determine if a screen has evaporated during storage to more sophisticated systems such as a sample labelling and tracking system. The most important - and perhaps surprising - lesson has been how much effort is required to effectively communicate between the centre and its clients, as well as between the centre's staff members. It is easy to confuse the concept of 'high throughput' in any field with the idea of setting up an experiment quickly. Although automation can be used to set up a single experiment more rapidly than can be done by hand, the distinguishing feature of a high throughput technology is the sustainability of the increased rate.
将商业实验室自动化转变为高通量中心需要一个基础过程，并实施检查以确保该过程按预期运行。在协作结晶中心（C3），来自本地、国家和国际团队的蛋白质样本在结晶筛选和优化实验中进行设置，每年设置两千个 96 孔板。在五年的运行过程中，C3 实施了一系列使能协议——从简单的“现实检查”以确定屏幕在存储过程中是否蒸发，到更复杂的系统，如样本标记和跟踪系统。最重要的——也许是令人惊讶的——是在中心与其客户之间以及中心工作人员之间进行有效沟通所需的努力。很容易将任何领域的“高通量”概念与快速设置实验的想法混淆。尽管自动化可以用于比手动更快地设置单个实验，但高通量技术的显著特征是增加速率的可持续性。
