From Pixels
to Precision.
| Infrastructure
At the Breker Lab, we have developed unique, automated pipelines supported by an integrated infrastructure to perform large-scale mutagenesis and systematically generate mutant collections. These custom-designed pipelines enable high-throughput genetic perturbations and phenotypic screening with exceptional precision and scalability.
Mutant colonies are first isolated using the PIXL system, which allows for high-precision random colony picking.
Mutagenized colonies randomly spread on agar plates are quickly picked and arrayed to conventional formats
The selected colonies are then propagated into high-density array formats using the ROTOR+ HDA by Singer Instruments, a robust robotic platform that facilitates efficient replication, expansion, and management of large mutant libraries.
Routine replica-plating of high-density format plates
For phenotypic analysis, we employ a state-of-the-art high-throughput microscopy platform built entirely in-house. At its core is a custom-modified Liconic incubator, specifically adapted for photosynthetic microorganisms, seamlessly integrated with a Tecan liquid handling system and connected to an Olympus spinning disk confocal microscope. This setup enables continuous, automated live-cell imaging of thousands of samples under tightly controlled environmental and illumination conditions, delivering high-resolution spatial and temporal data at scale.
High-throughput
microscopy
​Promising mutants are then selected for genetic characterization using Bulked-Segregant Analysis or MAPS-seq. We leverage the unique physiological features of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, which allow us to induce mating and generate meiotically recombined progenies following zygospore maturation. Using the SporePlay system by Singer Instruments, we can efficiently isolate individual tetrads and analyze genotype–phenotype segregation with high precision.
Tetrad Dissection of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Using SporePlay+
This tailored infrastructure places our lab at the forefront of automated functional genomics, with a particular emphasis on a wide range of photosynthetic microorganisms—including green microalgae and diatoms—empowering us to uncover complex cellular mechanisms with unprecedented throughput and detail.