Colony-Picking Robots: Accelerating Synthetic Biology Research and Genetic Engineering
Synthetic biology, also known as syn-bio, has emerged as a groundbreaking field that combines biology, engineering, and computer science to create and improve organisms for various applications. The ability to engineer microorganisms with enhanced productivity has paved the way for accelerated bioproduction, leading to advancements in biofuels, pharmaceuticals, and specialty [...]
Principles of Plasmid Isolation
In the dynamic field of molecular biology, understanding the intricacies of plasmid DNA is crucial for both fundamental research and practical applications in genetic engineering, biotechnology, and synthetic biology. Plasmids, which are circular DNA molecules distinct from the chromosomal DNA in bacteria, play a pivotal role in how these organisms [...]
The Technology Behind Colony Picking Robots
Colony picking is the most important aspect of identifying microorganisms for many applications. Used mainly to identify different bacteria, colonies are isolated for future analysis and duplication. The technology behind and colony picking itself is the cornerstone of any microbiology laboratory. Before automated colony picking robots, it was a tedious [...]
How Colony Picking Robots Enhance Efficiency in High-throughput Research
Before advances in automation, samples had to be screened and tested by hand. Not only was this an inefficient way to process samples, the work hours alone required to perform colony picking or other applications could take hours, even days, to process a small amount of samples. However, with the [...]
The Rise of Colony Picking Robots: Revolutionizing Laboratory Automation
Those who watch or read the news may be familiar with how many decades it took for the first genome sequencing projects to come to fruition fully. Tens of thousands of individual fragments were used in these projects, but these fragments had to undergo processes before they became usable. Each [...]
5 Facts About Your Microbial Colony Picker
What is a microbial colony picker used for? This machine is used in the culturing of microbial samples in instances where researchers wish to select a certain colony and then duplicate it. There are many applications in which colony picking is used, including DNA sequencing, synthetic biology (syn-bio), anaerobic species [...]
What Bacterial Colonies Can Tell Us
When bacteria are cultured on solid media, it grows in formations called colonies. A bacterial colony is a cluster of cells derived from the same mother cell. They are fascinating microcosms that can reveal a wealth of information about the microorganisms that inhabit them. Microbiologists often use bacterial colonies to [...]
What to Look for in a Colony Picking Robot
Colony picking refers to the selecting and inoculating of a single bacterial colony from a cultured sample on a plate. Colony picking is a pre-processing step in many lab procedures, from DNA extraction to next gen sequencing. Colony picking robots are machines that first use image processing to select a [...]
Automating PCR Prep in Your Laboratory
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a technique used to amplify a specific DNA fragment, often starting with a small amount of template DNA, such as a single bacterial colony. PCR is a time-consuming process, especially when done manually. Automating PCR prep can significantly improve the efficiency and accuracy of laboratory [...]
Plasmid Isolation from DNA: Process & Challenges
DNA plasmid isolation is integral to biology as it’s used in many functions. This includes DNA sequencing, cloning, in vitro translation, gene therapy, blotting, and more. However, while the process of DNA plasmid isolation is a crucial aspect of biology, it also comes with its challenges. In plasmid isolation, it [...]