Low-cost, automated colony picker and innoculator

[jcmolloy]

The idea is to create a simple but functional platform where you can put your petri dish with your colonies and then take a picture of it. The idea is to use an image processor (i.e. ImageJ) to analyse the picture and assign x and y values for the colonies. Then a move automatically the tip to those colonies which will be inoculated to another plate or to a 96-well plate. The idea is to create a flexible platform so it can be use for multiple purposes.

Contact: Aleix Gorchs-Rovira

[aleix-gorchs]

Hi all,

I am 2nd year PhD student in molecular biology interested in creating a low-cost colony picker with a flexible output (i.e. restreaking on a new plate, inoculating ELISA plates, ...) so it can be used in multiple environments. If you are interested please contact me on [email protected]

[Cyberius]

Could you explain what a colony picker is, for those of us who are not familiar with the discipline? Cheers.

[aleix-gorchs]

So basically the idea is to create an arm with a pipette that would be able to detect bacterial/algal colonies on a petri dish plate and then will propagate them in another petri dish plate or in a ELISA plate (one colony per each well). The idea is to automatise the process since it can be quite laborious and tedious in research labs. From my experience, I have to pick at least 100 colonies each time that I do a transformation with my algal model organism so having a low-cost automated colony picker would benefit a lot of different research groups. Here an example of colony picker in the market which is really expensive and bulky: http://hudsonrobotics.com/products/colony-picking/rapidpick/#Overview

[Cyberius]

This sounds so fun. I wish I had time to get involved with more of these projects. I watched a few of the videos you linked. Are you thinking of automated colony detection via camera or just picking in a matrix? I imagine automatic detection would be quite a challenge, since you'd somehow have to define where colonies start and end.

[aleix-gorchs]

Defining colonies can be done quite easily with some Image software like ImageJ so if it can be incorporated in the whole process would allow us to do automated colony picking :)

[Cyberius]

Very nice.