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Colony Picking Goes Economical: EasyPick from Hamilton
Manual colony picking is a time-consuming process which a lot of laboratories would like to automate. But is it worthwhile investing in a colony picker? Labs that previously said no to this question now have an inexpensive solution available: EasyPick - a combination of colony picker and pipetting robot. EasyPick automates not just picking, but sample preparation too.
In comparison with manual colony picking, automated picking is faster, more consistent and more reliable. Several manufacturers have colony pickers on the market that can process well over a thousand colonies an hour. For many labs this throughput is too high, however, because it bears no relation to the throughput of the upstream or downstream robot. This means that the expensive colony picker sits idle for long periods.
Hamilton now offers a workable alternative. EasyPick is a package consisting of a CCD camera, a light table and image-processing software integrated with a STAR pipetting robot. With EasyPick, laboratory users can do their colony picking and sample preparation on the same instrument.
EasyPick works like a traditional colony picker: colonies of bacteria, yeast strains, phages etc. are identified according to size, shape, colour, and proximity to neighbouring colonies. The throughput of 300 colonies per hour is quite sufficient for most users. The system also automates processes like plasmid isolation and sample preparation for PCR, sequencing and more. The deck capacity of up to 160 plates means that the user can leave EasyPick operating for several hours without supervision.
EasyPick is a cost-effective overall solution for applications that require colony picking and traditional sample preparation, such as Gateway™ or other methods of cloning. EasyPick comes in three different platform sizes, and with 1 to 12 pipetting channels. That kind of flexibility enables users to build a system matching their requirements in the way of throughput - and budget as well.
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