On a small
darkened platform a handful of fruit flies wander aimlessly. There is a brief
flash of light and a robotic arm darts downward, precisely targeting a fly’s
thorax, a moving target roughly the size of a pinhead. The fly seems unfazed,
appearing not to notice that it has been snatched by a high-speed laboratory
robot. The system, which has been prototyped by a team of biologists and
roboticists at Stanford, makes it possible automate many aspects of research on
Drosophila, one of the most popular experimental animals.
Tasks such as
determining gender, measuring the size of body parts and even performing
micro-brain surgery — long performed by graduate students armed with tweezers —
can now be assigned to a robot. In one experiment, the robot exposed a fly
running on a tiny trackball to different odors as the researchers recorded its
changing path. The robot arm is extremely precise and uses the fly’s legs as
shock absorbers, to avoid crushing or impaling the insects. The robot is also
far more efficient than the previous grad student-powered methods.
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