Booth 502
Date
September 30 - October 2, 2025
Stay tuned for more talks and posters.
| Time | Type | Description | Room / Location | Presenter |
| 18:10 | POSTERS | Streamlined Automated Workflows for Aerobic and Anaerobic Microbial Screening Poster: 119
Microbial strains underpin innovation across biotechnology, healthcare, and environmental science—driving advances in protein therapeutics, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology. Yet, conventional manual workflows remain fragmented, introducing variability, contamination risks, and throughput limitations that hinder reproducibility and delay discovery. Here, we present a fully integrated, sterile microbial screening and colony-picking platform that automates plating and streaking, phenotypic colorimetric selection, liquid transfers, and comprehensive data management. By eliminating manual variability and contamination hazards, this solution significantly boosts throughput and ensures robust and reproducible outcomes.
Under sterile aerobic conditions, cultures of Escherichia coli, Klebsiella aerogenes, Candida albicans, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae were processed using an automated system that combines phenotypic colorimetric selection (blue/white and blue/pink for bacteria; green/purple for yeast) with morphology-based criteria (colony diameter, compactness, axis ratio). The platform achieved 95 % pick efficiency and 99 % transfer accuracy, with OD₆₀₀ monitoring confirming zero contamination. Strategic hit picking coupled with data tracking ensured full traceability and eliminated manual errors, thereby supporting robust downstream functional analyses with confidence.
The workflow was further validated in a microbiome study involving gut sample processing under anaerobic conditions. Traditionally, these workflows require extensive anaerobic chamber handling but automation of plating, colony picking, liquid handling reduced protocol complexity and cut turnaround time by up to three days. Enhanced recovery of isolated colonies reduced operator fatigue, and standardized output make this integrated work cell a scalable solution for microbiome research and engineered microbial platforms.
By resolving key challenges in microbial research, this approach delivers reproducible, contamination-free colony isolation and accelerates experimental timelines—empowering scientists to scale discovery with precision.
Molecular Devices. | Poster Area | Janet Graystone |
