Development of an automated culture system for laboratory evolution

Laboratory evolution provides phenotype-genotype mappings and quantitative analysis of selective pressures, giving important insights about evolutionary dynamics. Moreover, parallel laboratory evolution clarifies which phenotypic and genotypic changes are inevitable for adaptive evolution. Such parallel experiments, however, remain labor-intensive. In this study, to facilitate massive parallel laboratory evolution, we developed an automated culture system that can maintain hundreds of independent culture series in exponential growth phase under various culture conditions. We demonstrate the performance of this automated culture system using the laboratory evolution of Escherichia coli under various stressors.