The University of Miami has a new SmaRTStore at its Human Genomics Institute, one of only four in the entire country being used to bank DNA samples.
The high-tech, million-dollar DNA banking system is at the center of a number of international studies. SmaRTStore will help further projects looking for the genetic keys to disease, from autism to Parkinson’s.
The system can hold half a million DNA samples at minus twenty degrees Celcius, each vial with its own bar code.
The robotic system uses the bar code to retrieve the precise DNA samples researchers need to study the genetics of a particular disease, like multiple sclerosis.
“We have over 27,000 DNAs of MS patients. To be able to use that DNA to generate results that will hopefully help patients at some point, this will do it overnight,” explained Margaret Pericak-Vance, director the John P. Hussman Instititute for Human Genomics.
Earlier this year UM researchers, using DNA from 40,000 volunteers, helped identify four new genes linked to Alzheimer's Disease.
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SmaRTStore quadruples the number of such samples they are able to store at UM, the automated system making the search and retrieval process more accurate and ten times faster.
The robotic equipment is now also being used to extract the DNA from blood samples donated by volunteers.
Prior to having the new technology, Pericak-Vance explained, the process was much more cumbersome.
"Say I needed to do a special analysis," she said. "It could take several weeks to allocate that DNA. Now, it will be in this machine. I can request it overnight and I can move it into the lab and look at the sequencing.”
