NAT Platform
Nucleic Acid Technologies platform is an automated and integrated system for the high throughput nucleic acid analyses that has been involved in biomedical studies for several years both for their own account and as facility for other institutions. For these reasons the NAT platform has accumulated significant experience in managing different kind of biological specimens, a high number of samples/day, different kind of molecular analyses, quality control and data interpretation.
The platform has:
- a liquid handling robotic system from Perkin Elmer (Multiprobe II) (integrated and interfaced with two PCRs, an electrophoretic system, a centrifuge and a vacuum manifold) able to carry out every operation of pipetting, transferring, diluting, etc. Its task is to extract DNA and RNA and to prepare mixtures for various analyses (PCR, sequencing, real time PCR etc.)
- a 96 capillary automatic sequencer from GE Healthcare (Amersham) MegaBACE 1000 DNA Analysis System which is able to sequence PCR fragments, to carry out SNPs and microsatellites analyses
- an Applied Biosystems 7900HT Fast Real-Time PCR System for quantification of nucleic acids and allelic discrimination analysis
- a BioTek Synergy™ HT Multi-Detection Microplate Reader for fluorescence, absorbance and luminescence measurements
- a suspension array system Bio-Plex BIO-RAD
Scientific Director
Alessandra Mezzelani, Ph.D. in Biotechnologies, is the scientific director of the NAT platform. She has been a researcher at the Institute of Anatomy Pathology of The National Institute of Cancer –Milan- for six years, and is a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Tecnologies (ITB) CNR since 2001.
Dr. Alessandra Mezzelani