Instrumentation Group
Group Responsibilities
The Instrumentation Group is an engineering and scientific support group to both the production sequencing process and the research groups at the JGI Production Genomics Facility in Walnut Creek, CA. the group is comprised of engineers, scientists, and technicians from both the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
The primary goal for the production process support is to keep the existing machines up and running as well as to select and install new equipment to meet the process needs. Support for R&D activities is similar but often requires more emphasis toward custom instrumentation as necessary. The general operating philosophy is to purchase commercial instrumentation if at all possible, followed by modification of commercial equipment as necessary. If there are no commercial options then custom solutions will be employed if the resource, cost, and time constraints can be justified. The types of support provided by the Instrumentation Group include
- Equipment specification, selection, and purchasing coordination.
- Equipment installation in coordination with the Facilities Group.
- Equipment testing and protocol programming in coordination with the Quality Control and Production Groups.
- Equipment maintenance: equipment calibration, preventative maintenance, service call coordination, on-site maintenance (electrical and mechanical) and troubleshooting.
- Equipment training.
- Safety engineering.
- Equipment safety
- Production line ergonomics
- Electro - Mechanical Design and fabrication.
- Small fixturing, racks, carts, spare parts, repairs.
- Custom automation: in-house design and fabrication of automated equipment.
- Management of equipment projects with external engineering design contractors.
- Software design.
- Procotol programming on manufacturer-supplied programming platforms.
- Custom software design for instrument control (Visual Basic, C++, image analysis)
- Process analysis and database instrument tracking
At all times we try to operate by following high customer service standards: Listening to the customer, negotiating a solution to the problem, keeping the customer informed of progress, and personnally following up on all work to see that it meets customer expectations.
JGI Instrumentation Personnel
Production Genomics Facility
Martin Pollard, Simon Roberts, Steven Wilson, Kecia Duffy-Wei, Paul Barale, Christine Naca, Bruce Gray, Victor Hepa, Lolo Cardenas, George Mercado, Greg Manino
JGI/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Karl Petermann, David Humphries, Charles Reiter
JGI Instrumentation
The following are the major pieces of equipment currently in use in the Joint Genome Institute for production sequencing.
Sequencing Instrumentation
- GE Healthcare MegaBACE4000 Capillary Sequencer
- Applied Biosystems 3730xl DNA Analyzer
Colony Picking
- Genetix QPix2 and QPix2XT Colony Pickers
Liquid Handling Instruments
- Matrix Platemate Plus Automated Pipetting System
- Thermo Multdrop 384 Dispensers w/ Assist Plate Handling Device
- Thermo Multidrop Micro
- Bio-Tek uFill Microplate Reagent Dispenser
- Robbins Hydra HTS Workstation w/ Hydra 384 w/ Duraflex needles
- Beckman Biomek FX and NX Workstations
- Beckman Multimek
- Tecan MiniPrep 60 pipetting station and Genesis 150 Robotic Sample Processor
- JGI Custom Cavro based Dispensing System
- Matrix Wellmate
- Cybi-Well vario Pipetting Robot
- Cybi-Drop Dispenser
Thermal Cycling
- Applied Biosystem GeneAmp 9700 PCR System
Additional Equipment
- LBNL Custom Magnetic Devices for magnetic bead applications in 96 and 384 format microtiter plates
- Genemachines HydroShear
- Velocity11 PlateLoc thermal microtiter plate sealer
- LBNL custom pneumatic plate sealer
- Molecular Devices SpectromaxPlus 384 Spectrophotometer
- BioRad Fluor-S MultiImager Imaging Station
- BioRad Gel Doc 2000 Imaging Station
- Hudson Plate Crane Microplate Robot
- Cybi-Print vario Barcode Printer
- Dual 384-Well GeneAmp PCR System 9700
- Automated colony plating instrument
