automation

In December 2001 the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology started to acquire new instruments for lab automation. The focus was on the screening of large gene libraries and their resulted need to handle up to 20.000 samples each as well as on the microarray technology.

Five new instruments were used in this project:
- One microarray spotter and scanner
- Two liquid handling robots
- One plate analyser

In 2004 the Microbial Genomics Group was established and the microarray equipment has been extended by a hybridization station. In the same time software development regarding the microarray data analyses was started.

For the establishing and administration of the automation systems a position as 'technical assistant for laboratory automation' was appointed in the Department of Molecular Ecology.