CLICKER BE GONE: Researchers can now screen for mutations in C. elegans, pictured here containing offspring, using automated technology.© SINCLAIR STAMMERS/SCIENCE SOURCE
The paper
M.M. Crane et al., “Autonomous screening of C. elegans identifies genes implicated in synaptogenesis,” Nat Methods, 9:977-80, 2012.
The method
Sorting and characterizing C. elegans mutants can be a labor-intensive process, so Hang Lu, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, and her colleagues developed an automated screening device that can work at breakneck speed without the need for human hands and eyes. Her approach improves upon other automated sorters in that it can detect minute subcellular features requiring high resolution.
The finding The microfluidic device shuttles mutated worms one by one under a microscope. The worms’ feature of interest, in this case a synaptic vesicle protein, RAB-3, is labeled with a fluorescent tag. Pattern-recognition software—designed to identify changes in the location, size, ...
