66 -- COLONY ARRAYER AND PICKING SYSTEM

Notice Date

September 6, 2001

Contracting Office

National Institutes of Health, NIAID, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, 903 South 4th Street, Hamilton, MT 59840

ZIP Code

59840

Solicitation Number

RML-RFQ #030

Response Due

September 21, 2001

Point of Contact

Lynda Kieres, Purchasing Agent (406)363-9210; Rebecca Guenthner, Contracting Officer (301-402-2284

E-Mail Address

Click here to contact the Purchasing Agent via e-mail (LKieres@niaid.nih.gov)

Description

This notice is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items prepared in accordance with the format in Subpart 12.6, as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation; quotes are being requested and a written solicitation will not be issued. This procurement is being issued as a request for quotation. Submit offers on RML-RFQ # 030. The solicitation documents and incorporated provisions and clauses are those in effect through Federal Acquisition Circular 97-27 dated 04/25/01. This acquisition will be processed under Simplified Acquisition Procedures (SAP) and is a Total Small Business Set-Aside. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this procurement is 334516 and the small business size is 500. The Rocky Mountain Laboratories, Laboratory of Human Bacterial Pathogenesis has several large scale genomics projects in progress and several planned for the near future. These projects necessitate the acquisition of a robotic colony-picking machine. With the Streptococcal genome knockout projects and the Borrelia genome sequencing projects a machine that can pick bacterial colonies off of agar plates efficiently, accurately and at a relatively high throughput is needed. In addition, the colony-picking unit will be used for transposon mutagenesis and for the construction of deletion mutants. Both of these procedures require the picking of thousands of clones (ca. 20000 for a transposon mutagenesis, and between 2000 and 4000 for a gene deletion procedure). Once one or more transposon banks of about 20000 clones each is established, the picking robot will be used to inoculate microtiter test plates for various analyses from these banks. Both procedures aim at the finding and characterization of virulence factors of the human pathogen germ Staphylococcus epidermidis. The lab is also performing cDNA sequencing of tick salivary glands and 1000s of clones are being sequenced at this time. This project is geared towards defining the molecular basis for vector specificity for Borrelia transmission. Gene deletions will be performed routinely and require multiple rearraying and picking steps. SCHEDULE: Furnish, install and train personnel to operate a colony arrayer and picking system. The system must meet the following salient characteristics: 1) The colony picker should perform chip writing. 2) It must have a capacity and throughput of 1 colony pick /second. 3) The colony picker must have an advanced robotic work-station for automatic recognition, picking and transferring randomly distributed colonies to microwell plates. 4) The unit should be compact, modular and multifunctional in design to allow the user to perform colony picking, replicating, liquid transfer and re-arraying of samples. 7) The colony picker should have superior image processing capability, neuro-fuzzy algorithms, super-precision robotics and sophisticated control algorithms. 6) The colony picker should be fully compatible with our existing Virtek, SDDC-2 microarrayer and Virtek ChipWriter Pro. 7) The image processing systems must be able to recognize colonies 500 micron in diameter or larger. The minimum distance between colonies that the machine can tolerate should be 300 micron. 8) The colony picker should be programmable to pick up any number of colonies and dispense them in multiple or deep-well plates. 9) Raw picking speed must be at or exceed 1 pick/second 10) The colony picker must be able to accommodate two standard petri dishes (225x225mm) and 28 microwell plates when used as a picker. 11) The capacity of the machine when used as a colony picker should be 40 gel plates. For example the machine would be loaded with four microwell-plate trays, each loaded with 10 gel plates. 12) An automatic microwell plate stacker must be used to load or unload the microwell or gel plates to/from the trays. Each of the 5 stacks should have a capacity of 8 plates. 13) The colony picker should use a software that allows the user to define the type and number of Petri plates, the type and number of 96/384-well plates, speed of dispenser motion, and the timing of the washing and sterilizing process, etc. 14) The colony picker image processing system should be based on neuro-fuzzy decision algorithms for characterization and quality analysis of colony roundness, shape, size, etc.. Colonies should be sorted based on morphological information so that better-shaped colonies are picked before lower-quality colonies are. 15) The colony picker must contain a 3-axis Cartesian Sub-system providing negative compliance resulting in zero deviation under working loads. 16) The colony picker must contain a high-quality CCD camera with quality lenses and illumination system. Image collection must be fast and accurate. Image collection must be facilitated by advanced frame-grabber and image-processing modules. 17) The end-effector must be compatible with the colony picker and impedance-controlled to provide gentle and uniform collection of bacterial colonies without the associated gel. After each pick-and-dispense cycle, the end-effector needles must be sterilized in at least three washing stations, including at the least a sonicator bath and air-dyer unit. The sterilizing, washing and drying cycles must be fully programmable. FOB Point shall be Destination, Hamilton, MT. Delivery location is Rocky Mountain Laboratories, 903 S. 4th Street, Hamilton, MT. The following FAR provisions and clauses apply to this acquisition: 52.212-1 Instructions to Offerors Commercial; FAR 52.212-2 Evaluation Commercial Items; FAR 52-212-4 Contract Terms and Conditions Commercial Items; FAR 52-212.5 Contract Terms and Conditions Required to Implement Statues or Executive Orders Commercial Items. Offerors must include with their offer a completed copy of the provisions at FAR 52.212-3 Offerors Representations and Certifications Commercial Items. Award will be based on: 1) The capability of the item offered to meet the above stated salient characteristics; 2) Warranty Terms; 3) Price; and 4) Delivery Time. Offers may be mailed or faxed to the POC indicated above (Fax -- 406-363-9288). Offers must be submitted not later than 4:30 PM (MDST), September 21, 2001. Copies of the above-referenced clauses are available upon request, either by telephone or fax. All responsible sources may submit an offer that will be considered by this Agency.

Record

Loren Data Corp. 20010910/66SOL002.HTM (W-249 SN50W9A4)