Hamilton Star liquid handler installation at the Diamond Light Source MPL Laboratory

Hamilton Robotics Ltd have recently completed the installation of a STAR liquid handler at the newly commissioned Membrane Protein Crystallography Laboratory (MPL) at the Diamond Light Source near Didcot in Oxfordshire.

This new laboratory is a joint venture between the Diamond Light Source and Imperial College London, funded by the Wellcome Trust and directed by Professor So Iwata. The MPL is a user research facility, which will be available to all scientists who are interested in crystallising and solving structures of membrane proteins. In addition to the MPL staff, other members of Professor Iwata’s group are located at Diamond and several funding sources have contributed to the funding of the lab.

The liquid handler has been provided by the ERATO human receptor crystallography project and will be integrated into the MPL state-of-the-art crystallisation robotics system. Over the next few months, Hamilton's applications specialists will be working with Dr. Liz Carpenter, the MPL group leader at the new facility, to develop a suite of flexible protocols to fulfil the laboratories liquid handling needs.

Dr Liz Carpenter said that they selected a Hamilton STAR robot for liquid handling in the MPL because of the proven track record of this system in protein crystallography and because the system had previously been used for integration with other robotics systems. The system will give high quality liquid handling and Hamilton provide expert applications and engineering support. The MPL staff look forward to working with Hamilton in the future.