miniTower

MiniTower is the next-generation robot that enables full automation of C. elegans assays, including healthspan, lifespan, and chemotaxis studies, unlocking new possibilities for researchers in the field. The miniTower’s automated system takes care of loading and unloading Petri dishes, effortlessly integrating them with the capture system, releasing researchers from these manual tasks.

Fig. 1.- The first miniTower prototype.

There are new versions of miniTower to provide a more reliable, professional and visually atractive aspect. We’re continually evolving the system to a more reliable and commercial product.

Fig. 2.- Evolved designs: Exploring new miniTower prototype iterations.

The results obtained from validation trials using the miniTower prototype are described below. These health trials were conducted at the IIS-LaFe using three different worm strains. The wild-type strain (N2 Bristol) served as the control, the study condition was a strain with the genotype vltIs66[unc-25p::144CAG]; myo-2p::mCherry (RVM66), and a mutant with evident mobility problems (mutants of the unc-1/Stomatin-like protein 3 gene) served as the negative control. The first health tests were performed with the robot inside the incubator. In this case, the results were as expected. They showed that strain N2 exhibited the best health, followed by RVM-66 and unc-1 (Figure 3).

Figure 3.- Healthspan results for the three strains.

Figure 4.- Validation result for a lifespan test in miniTower.