Postdoctoral fellows Jenny Hamilton and Enrique Lin Shiao with an automated liquid-handling robot (Hamilton STARlet) that will be used to analyze swabs from patients to diagnose COVID-19. Hamilton and Shiao volunteered to train to become CLIA certified so as to process patient samples. When analyzing real samples from patients, they would be wearing full personal protective equipment (PPE), including mask, face shield, gown and gloves. Source: Max & Jules PhotographyA team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) is building a robotic pop-up laboratory in response to the coronavirus pandemic with the potential for processing over 1,000 patient swab samples in under 24 hours.

As current testing time frames in the hard-hit Bay Area can take as long as a week, the team of volunteer scientists is attempting to improve processing times using robotic and analytical equipment for sample handling in a make-shift lab.

To accomplish this, the scientists accelerated standard virus testing — wherein RNA is isolated from a sample and amplified with a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) — using high-throughput PCR machines and automated robotic handling equipment. The combination of techniques enables the lab to test 300 samples simultaneously.

Initially, swab samples from students and other UC Berkeley community members will be processed as the pop-up lab awaits federal Clinical Laboratory Improvements Amendments certification for testing beyond the Berkeley community.

In addition to expediting test results, the team of volunteer scientists believe that data amassed by the lab could potentially enhance experts’ understanding of how the coronavirus is spreading.