Automated handling of Drosophila for biological investigation
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is a key model species for biological research. Trained humans can manipulate, inspect and dissect individual flies, but these operations are often rate-limiting bottlenecks for screening and experimentation. Here I present a high-speed, economical robot for handling non-anesthetized adult flies. Using machine vision the robot tracks a fly's thorax and gently grabs it ~400 ms after targeting. The robot can then translate and rotate the picked fly, inspect its phenotype, dissect or release it, and thereby rapidly prepare multiple flies sequentially for a wide range of experimental formats. In one illustration, the robot restrained flies and dissected the cuticle to permit two-photon imaging of neural dynamics. In another, the robot sorted flies by sex. The robot's tireless capacity for accurate, repeatable manipulations will enable experiments and biotechnology applications that would otherwise be totally infeasible, especially those requiring high-throughput capture, testing and assessment of individual fly attributes.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Ho, Eric Tatt Wei |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Electrical Engineering. |
| Primary advisor | Schnitzer, Mark Jacob, 1970- |
| Primary advisor | Shenoy, Krishna V. (Krishna Vaughn) |
| Thesis advisor | Schnitzer, Mark Jacob, 1970- |
| Thesis advisor | Shenoy, Krishna V. (Krishna Vaughn) |
| Thesis advisor | Clandinin, Thomas R. (Thomas Robert), 1970- |
| Advisor | Clandinin, Thomas R. (Thomas Robert), 1970- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Eric Tatt Wei Ho. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2013. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Tatt Wei Ho
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
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