PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sanderson, Theo
AU  - Rayner, Julian C.
TI  - PlasmoTron: an open-source platform for automated culture of malaria parasites
AID  - 10.1101/241596
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 241596
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/20/241596.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/20/241596.full
AB  - We have created a system which allows an inexpensive opensource liquid-handling robot to automate most aspects of bloodstage malaria parasite culture. Parasites are cultured in multiwell microplates, with their details recorded in a database. Information in the database is used to generate commands for the robot to feed, monitor and passage parasite cultures. We show that the system is capable of raising cultures after transfection and then maintaining them at desired parasitaemias, facilitiating significant scale up of both routine culture and experimental genetic modification. The PlasmoTron software is available at plasmotron.org.