Growth Curve

The BIO building at Argonne houses a robotic experimentation platform known as the Hudson. This platform is equipped with all the robotics and specialized equipment necessary to conduct growth curve experiments, also referred to as dose-response assays. Our growth curve experiment combines five serial dilutions of a treatment, such as antibiotics or antimicrobial peptides, with cells, such as laboratory E.coli strains or antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, incubates for 12 hours, then observes the effect of the treatment on the growth rate of the cells.

For the past two years, this robotic platform has relied on the use of Hudson SoftLinx integration software to connect and coordinate the actions of each robot/instrument on the platform. However, as the Rapid Prototyping Laboratory, our objective is to unify robotic efforts across the lab and reduce dependence on third-party software. To accomplish this through the growth curve project, we are working towards using WEI to integrate all robots on the Hudson workcell.

Running Instructions and Further Info

Applications

• Antimicrobial Peptides (AMPs)

• Screening for antibiotic resistance in environmental E. coli strains (Hope collection)