High Throughput Screening of HiBiT-tagged Proteins

Authors: Catherine Li, Lucian Li, Paulina Kanigowska Ph.D., Katie Vinter Ph.D., Jennifer Fredlund Ph.D., Tasnia Chowdhury, Alicia Byrn

Introduction

High-throughput screening (HTS) is a widely adopted methodology in the fields of drug discovery and synthetic biology which heavily relies on the latest advances in laboratory automation. The advantages of screening thousands of samples in parallel include faster selection of samples of interest - “hits”, and rejection of remaining samples from further, more costly analysis¹. In particular, the HiBiT assay (developed by Promega) is a valuable screening method enabling quick assessment of protein expression across a large number of candidate microbial and mammalian strains. 

Here, we demonstrate how Ginkgo Automation’s Reconfigurable Automation Cart (RAC) platform was leveraged to fully automate the HiBiT assay, ultimately generating high-quality data at large scale - nearly 10,000 samples - and thus enabling powerful hit identification, with 80% less hands-on time versus standalone lab automation instrumentation. Additionally, we show the ease with which users can onboard new capabilities and protocols onto a RAC system. In this application note, a new capability - plate reading, was enabled on an existing RAC system through a straightforward, single RAC addition, which took just 5 hours. This capability was added without the need for any significant lab automation system re-design.

Subscribe to receive future application notes