Team Members
Andrew Buchanan, Joshua Hornilla, Mary Klenk, Matteo McKinney, Henry Pham, Gabriela Ramsey, Austin Sharp, Mohammed Taha, Andrea Wright
Abstract
Team 2’s design, the Multiple Environment Cell Culturing Reactor (MECCR), excels in other than to add nutrients and remove waste. This was to achieve the hedgehog concept to minimize the length of time cells are not in the controlled environment. This means the cells are culturing in a fully automated gas and temperature-controlled environment for procedures such as shaking of well plates or tubes, and measurements needed to track the growth of the cells. The plate movement device has to be cheap, because it is placed in four different controlled environments. The plate movement subsystem also has to be compact, to keep the overall size of the reactor to the size of a benchtop. Four different measurement devices were designed to fit in each climate-controlled container, the most complicated being the non-384 well plate measurement system, this component is able to collimate the light for 5 well plate sizes to get very accurate measurements. Similar designs are integrated into the other 3 containers for the 384 wells plate and different sized tubes. The design meets all the needs set forth by the UF Biofoundry.