The SIDNET facility, located in the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, provides the academic community access to a wide variety of automation platforms, high-throughput and high-content technologies. The facility also provides researchers with various clone archives of human or mouse genes including the cDNA, shRNA, and endoribonuclease-prepared siRNA (esiRNA) for simple and cost-effective screening approaches to identify the role of specific genes and gene families in cell signalling pathways and networks. Integration of liquid-handling, cell culture and detection technologies facilitates an uninterrupted workflow, results in increased quantity and quality of data. Equipment available at the facility include the CataLyst Express articulated arm that can retrieve or place plates, an integrated bar code reader, BioTek plate washer, Thermo Kendro Cytomat cell culture incubator, Perkin Elmer PlateStak storage, Perkin Elmer Envision multimode plate reader and the Perkin Elmer Evolution 96/384 well liquid handling system. These, as well as additional robotics and detection instruments, are also available offline for use in assay development and validation. The Cellomics KSR allows for microscopy of live cells and is capable of resolving separated fluorescent labels to quantitatively measure multiple features simultaneously to determine the effects of gene overexpression, knock-down or small molecules on cellular phenotypes. Additionally, a variety of in vitro screening approaches are also available using purified proteins in multi-well plates and custom printed or commercially available protein arrays.
