ABSTRACT
Microplates and robotic instrumentation have become familiar tools in many laboratories, particularly those involved in high sample throughput projects, such as the Human Genome Project, and in drug discovery laboratories, which must screen thousands of lead compounds. In this chapter, the authors cover the types of microplate currently available, their range of applications and the instrumentation that is available to handle these. The onset of high-throughput genomics also brought about the need for high-throughput DNA purification systems that could produce high-purity DNA quickly and efficiently. The use of microplates is again central to this. More than 10 years ago when the first plasmid miniprep and PCR clean-up kits appeared they used individual spin column formats. The success of the high-throughput approaches to genomics has led to the birth of proteomics in which the total protein content of the cell, the ‘proteome’, will be studied in a similar high-throughput and parallel fashion.
