High-throughput growth and data with ‘impact’: Converting the Singer testing fleet into a lab

Singer Instruments have been embedded in the yeast academic community since 1982, and had supported the wider scientific community for 85 years. Traditionally, the role of our lab has been testing prototypes, engaging in the work of R&D for the production and improvement of robotic products. For the first time, in collaboration with the University of Manchester, Singer have recruited a PhD student to actively engaged in independent research. This has required quickly changing tack from a prototype and software development test bed, to a lab capable of outputting meaningful data to collaborators within the Aromagenesis project. Collaboration with local beverage producers has allowed a transitional generation of impactful data, that is in the process of informing experimentation into their own brewing processes. Colonies are picked using the newly developed PIXL, and strains arrayed via the ROTOR in excess of 1536 colonies per plate, colony growth data was analysed using the imaging device PhenoBooth. This has allowed rapid generation of data on numerous media types in the projects relatively short time span. The effects of in-house research are already been realised, with innovative changes to products, and detailed requests for making software more helpful to scientists. With a greater automation capacity than is currently required by our own research, the ability to engage in collaborative projects and for Singer to provide a service to the yeast research community is very much increasing.