Development of an Automated Platform for HT Cloning and Expression

Introduction
•    More and more frequently, research projects in fields like structural biology, protein-protein interaction and vaccinology require cloning, expression and purification of a high number of proteins.
•    In the Cloning and Expression Unit at Novartis V&D in Siena we have long been involved in Reverse Vaccinology projects, which requires the production and screening of hundreds of antigens with the aim to select the best vaccine candidates (Rinaudo et al., 2009). Then we decided to exploit automation in order to speed up and potentiate our high throughput (HT) procedures, even under the consideration of the significant advances made in the field over the latter years and successfully implemented to molecular biology techniques (Lien and Lee, 2010; Hughes et al., 2011).