MacBeath Lab
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The MacBeath lab is closely affiliated with the FAS Center for Systems Biology (Gavin MacBeath was the first Research Fellow at the Center from 2000-2002, when it was called the Bauer Center for Genomics Research). The MacBeath lab is located adjacent to the FAS Center for Systems Biology and is grateful for the advice and assistance they receive in the area of laboratory automation.

The MacBeath lab is also closely affiliated with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (Gavin MacBeath is an associate member of the Broad Institute). All small molecule screening efforts are performed in collaboration with the Broad Institute.

In addition to standard laboratory equipment, the MacBeath lab depends heavily on the following instruments:

Microarrayers

 

BioChip Arrayer
(PerkinElmer Life Sciences)

The BioChip Arrayer (now Piezorray) is a noncontact, piezoelectric microarrayer. It delivers 320 pL droplets at defined locations onto twenty-five 2.5 by 7.5 cm glass slides or onto five microtiter plate-sized substrates.

This instrument is co-owned by the MacBeath lab and the FAS Center for Systems Biology.
 

NanoPrint
(TeleChem International, Inc.)

The NanoPrint is a contact printing microarrayer that has positional accuracy to within 500 nm. It can print onto standard 2.5 by 7.5 cm glass slides or onto our custom, microtiter plate-sized pieces of glass.

This instrument is co-owned by the MacBeath lab and the FAS Center for Systems Biology.

Microarray scanner

 

LS 400
(Tecan)

The LS400 is a four laser microarray scanner that can accomodate microtiter plates, as well as 2.5 by 7.5 cm glass slides.

Liquid handling

 

BioMek FX
(Beckman Coulter)

The BioMek FX is a 96-channel pipetting instrument for high-throughput liquid handling operations. The MacBeath lab uses this instrument for microtiter plate-based microarray work.

This instrument is owned by the FAS Center for Systems Biology.
 

ELx405
(BIO-TEK)

The ELx405 is a 96- and 384-well microtiter plate washer. The MacBeath lab uses this instrument for microtiter plate-based microarray work.

This instrument is owned by the FAS Center for Systems Biology.

Mass spectrometry

 

LC-MSn
(Agilent Technologies and
Thermo Electron)

The front end of this LC-MSn system is an Agilent 1100 series nanoflow LC that features excellent flow stability down to 100 nL/min. The backend is a Thermo LTQ linear ion trap mass spectrometer. The MacBeath lab uses this instrument to identify and quantify protein-protein interactions in biological samples.

This instrument is co-owned by the MacBeath lab and the FAS Center for Systems Biology.
 

MALDI-TOF MS
(Applied Biosystems)

The Voyager-DE Pro is an open-access MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer with a 3 Hz laser and delayed extraction. The MacBeath lab uses this instrument primarily to assess the integrity of synthetic peptides.

This instrument is owned by the FAS Center for Systems Biology.

Peptide synthesis

 

Apex 396
(Advanced ChemTech)

The Apex 396 is a 96-channel peptide synthesizer.

Biomolecular interaction analysis

 

Biacore 3000
(Biacore Life Sciences)

The Biacore 3000 is a fully automated instrument for detecting molecular interactions in real time using surface plasmon resonance (SPR).

This instrument is owned by the FAS Center for Systems Biology.

Fluorescence

 

Victor3 V
(PerkinElmer Life Sciences)

The Wallac 1420 VICTOR3 V is a multilabel, multitask plate reader that accepts all microtiter plate formats up to 1536 wells. It includes fluorescence intensity, fluorescence polarization, time-resolved fluorescence, absorbance, and luminescence technologies, as well as scanning, shaking, and kinetics features.