The Automation and PCR Technology group provides equipment, expertise, and collaborative services to Stowers Institute researchers regarding the automation of scientific experiments, including a particular focus on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques in which small samples of DNA are amplified to larger amounts for research studies.
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The Automation and PCR Technology team is dedicated to successful, high-quality project collaborations. They assist Institute research by supporting the use of numerous state-of-the-art instruments to enable completion of high-throughput projects and screens. The team provides instrument training, troubleshooting, and experimental design for real-time quantitative PCR. They have constructed yeast and bacterial collections, performed high-throughput screens, collaborated with Institute researchers to generate novel technologies, and used instrumentation to make routine laboratory tasks less tedious. The use of liquid handling and colony manipulation robots automate projects while reducing human error and increasing reproducibility. The team also provides automation expertise and guidance for custom automation projects.
Team Contact
Head, Automation and PCR Technology
Stowers Institute for Medical Research
With a B.S. degree in biology and training as a molecular biologist, Dan Bradford started his scientific career genotyping populations of paddlefish. Bradford also spent time as a microbiologist culturing the nitrogen-fixing bacteria Rhizobium for various agricultural products. Since joining the former Molecular Biology team at the Institute in 2005, Bradford has worked with numerous laboratory automation systems to develop novel high-throughput protocols and screens. He has been instrumental in developing high-throughput automated techniques including qPCR karyotyping of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida albicans, yeast-based high-content screening, and spectral karyotyping. He was an early adopter of synthetic genetic array technology for functional genomics screens. In 2019, Bradford was appointed senior laboratory manager of the newly formed Automation and PCR Technology team.
The Automation and PCR Technology Team takes pride in our ability to tackle ideas presented to us to produce novel automated techniques. Examples of past collaborative efforts include high-throughput karyotyping of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida albicans, high-throughput bacterial and yeast transformations, high-throughput serial dilutions and spotting onto agar surfaces, high-throughput isolation and normalization of gDNA, RNA, and pDNA, development of chromosomal spectral karyotyping “paints” for human and murine cell lines, and development of low volume, high-throughput Gibson Assembly and cloning workflows.
News
01 April 2015
Unless you’ve had cancer or supported someone who has, you may not be aware of the Herculean efforts often required to battle the disease. But if you are a cancer survivor, you’ve likely thanked an oncologist, possibly even the nurses and technicians at your cancer hospital.
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News
21 August 2024
Stowers scientists develop visual tool providing insight into the regulation of protein-producing ribosomes and how faulty ribosomes may lead to human disease
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Translation of small downstream ORFs enhances translation of canonical main open reading frames
Wu Q, Wright M, Gogol MM, Bradford WD, Zhang N, Bazzini AA. EMBO J. 2020;39:e104763. doi: 104710../embj.2020104763.
Varberg JM, Gardner JM, McCroskey S, Saravanan S, Bradford WD, Jaspersen SL. G3 (Bethesda). 2020.
Hypo-osmotic-like stress underlies general cellular defects of aneuploidy
Tsai HJ, Nelliat AR, Choudhury MI, Kucharavy A, Bradford WD, Cook ME, Kim J, Mair DB, Sun SX, Schatz MC, Li R. Nature. 2019;570:117-121.
Smoyer CJ, Smith SE, Gardner JM, McCroskey S, Unruh JR, Jaspersen SL. Genetics. 2019;211:1269-1282.
DNA replication stress restricts ribosomal DNA copy number
Salim D, Bradford WD, Freeland A, Cady G, Wang J, Pruitt SC, Gerton JL. PLoS Genet. 2017;13:e1007006.doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1007006.
Aneuploidy as a cause of impaired chromatin silencing and mating-type specification in budding yeast
Mulla WA, Seidel CW, Zhu J, Tsai HJ, Smith SE, Singh P, Bradford WD, McCroskey S, Nelliat AR, Conkright J, Peak A, Malanowski KE, Perera AG, Li R. eLife. 2017;6:e27991. doi: 27910.27554/eLife.27991.
