Colony picking on the Biomek i7

Beckman-Coulter
1

Hi everyone

We’ve managed to port our colony picking solution “Pickolo” to the Beckman Biomek (i7).

This was done also thanks to the help of people in this forums, so wanted to say thanks and keep this development community alive.

See a short clip of this running:
Pickolo on Beckman i7

And a closeup showing the picking process with the Span-8:
Closeup: Pickolo picking algae on Beckman Biomek

4 Likes
2

Looks great! This might be beyond the scope of your announcement but just curious if you translated the colony location coordinates to something that Biomek Software could interpret with something like a transfer step, or if everything is completed via direct commands to the Span8.

For example, did you translate the coordinates to a pattern or dataset to feed into a transfer command or is there script to tell the Span8 where to locate itself then which tip to access the colony with?

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3

Any chance the Pickolo can fit on an OpenTrons Flex? It’d be slower, but the liquid handler is the bulk of the cost in a Pickolo solution, the OT Flex could change that and make it a lot more accessible to small labs.

4

Thanks!
No direct commands.
We modify the labware during runtime so that the aspirate command goes directly to the colony with each tip.
Gives full control over the picking workflow.

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5

I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. If it’s open like the previous version from OT it should be doable.
In the version for the Biomek it takes 2 SBS positions but is also removable.

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