One-of-kind Hamilton, Montana lab empowers scientists to make new discoveries

Steve Porcella’s gene-sequencing lab here looks about like what you’d imagine when you hear the word "microbiology."

Technicians in jeans and tennis shoes study computer screens with scientific seriousness. People squirt unknown liquids into tiny plastic vials. Big boxy computers methodically sequence genes for hours.

The first hint that Porcella’s is not a run-of-the-mill lab is the robotic arm, which quietly conducts 384 different experiments in about five minutes and then repeats those experiments three times just to make sure the results are not a scientific fluke.

Put it all together – the robots, the computers, the gene sequencers and the people – and Porcella oversees the only lab of its kind in the nation’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the arm of the National Institutes of Health that oversees Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton.

That combination of robots and computers is allowing scientists at Rocky Mountain Labs and throughout the NIAID to take a "quantum leap forward" in microbiology, Porcella said this week.

"This is cutting-edge, world-class stuff," he said from behind his desk in a small, paper-filled office adjoining the two-room lab. "It allows us to do large projects quickly and efficiently."

By JENNIFER McKEE Missoulian State Bureau

Full Story:
http://missoulian.com/articles/2005/07/23/news/top/news01.txt