Application of robotics and image processing to automated colony picking and arraying.

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology
• Robotics
• Bioinformatics

Background:

• High-throughput screening of microbial libraries is crucial for biological research.
• Manual colony picking is labor-intensive and prone to errors.
• Automating colony manipulation enhances efficiency and reproducibility.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate an automated system for picking individual microbial colonies from square petri dishes.
• To array these colonies into 96-well microtiter plates for downstream applications.
• To improve the speed and accuracy of microbial library processing.

Main Methods:

• Utilized digital imaging (video camera, frame buffer) to capture colony distribution.
• Employed commercial image processing software for colony identification and localization.
• Integrated a Hewlett-Packard Microassay System robot for automated colony picking and transfer.
• Developed custom holders for accurate dish positioning and common coordinate systems.
• Implemented a disposable pipet tip for sterile colony manipulation.
• Calibrated the system for agar depth variations in petri dishes.

Main Results:

• The system successfully arrays microbial colonies into 96-well plates.
• Processed up to 10 dishes and 20 plates (1920 colonies) per run.
• Automated the arraying of a 6000-colony S. pombe cosmid library in approximately 40 robot hours.
• Demonstrated high throughput and efficiency in colony manipulation.

Conclusions:

• The developed automated system significantly enhances the efficiency of microbial colony arraying.
• This technology is valuable for large-scale genomic library processing and high-throughput screening.
• Future system enhancements are anticipated to further improve capabilities.