Team:Freiburg/Project/Robot

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Automating TAL production

Because of the simplicity of our toolkit it is easily possible to automate TAL production. This will help to meet the high demand for TAL effectors and at the same time reduce the high costs of TAL production.


How it is today

Ordering TAL effectors today can be a tough decision for a scientist. Not only is it complicated but also unbelievably expensive and time consuming. We checked some of the commercially available TAL products and found prices up to 5000 Euros for production of just one custom TAL nuclease. For support on how to choose a useful TAL sequence it was necessary to pay another 1000 Euros and you had to wait for several weeks until your TAL was finished and shipped.


How it will be tomorrow

The market for TAL effectors, especially TAL nucleases, is dominated by only a few companies holding patents on currently available TAL production methods. These companies are setting prices for TAL effectors and make a living selling overpriced products to scientist all over the world.
With our toolkit this practice hopefully comes to an end,as we shift the production of high quality TAL proteins into your hands. Our toolkit is not only easy to use and affordable, it is also automatable. The few steps that are necessary to produce TAL proteins with our kit are easily done by a pipetting robot in virtually no time. You can have 96 different TAL effectors on one plate in one run, put all of them into a thermocycler and use them directly afterwards.

Automated TAL production with a pippeting robot