Perlstein Lab is currently located at the QB3@953 biotech incubator in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco. We occupy two rows of lab benches and utilize a myriad of equipment in the facility. One of the rows of benches is for cultivating the simple model organisms that form the backbone of our orphan disease drug screening platform. We now have yeast, worms and flies growing side by side in perfect harmony. The second row of benches houses our high-throughput screening instruments, which include liquid handlers and a cell sorter.
Here’s a virtual tour of our lab space:
Fly Bench
Tom, our Drosophila melanogaster expert, resides next to vials of flies and his handy microscope. Each vial contains flies that have been engineered to express the same genetic mutation. To study and sort the flies, they are anesthetized with carbon dioxide and examined under the microscope for physical markers like curly wings or white eyes, which indicate the presence of our desired mutations.
Worm Bench
Sangeetha’s Caenorhabditis elegans (aka worms) are grown on Petri dishes of agar that contain a spot of bacteria that they eat as food. Worms start out their lives as eggs, and then progress through several larval stages until they mature into adults. Their mutation status can be monitored by size, growth and other behavioral endpoints under the microscope.
Yeast Bench
Nina’s Saccharomyces cerevisiae (aka yeast) bench features yeast media and the usual molecular biology tools, like a vortexer and a microcentrifuge. Genetically engineered yeast grow on Petri dishes with different types of agar media and are grown in a 30ºC incubator.
BioSorter
Once our genetically engineered organisms are prepared and characterized, we bring the organisms to the BioSorter to conduct high-throughput screening for discovering new drugs. The BioSorter is a specialized instrument that sorts and separates whole organisms by different properties (usually physiological or growth states). We then have assays that will look for changes in morphology or growth to determine whether the drug compounds fix the disease.
