Molecular Devices Corporation

Timothy Arthur Floto

Alison Amy Glaser

Michael G Youngquist

Fiona Lucy Plows

John Phillips

Kyle Corey

Anna Louise Forsyth

Padmavathi Bandhuvula

Lee Von Landau

Evan Francis Cromwell

Thomas L Smith

Grischa Chandy

Systems, including methods and apparatus, for growing viable monoclonal colonies, identifying them as monoclonal after their viability has been demonstrated, and picking and placing them into a target environment. The methods may include plating cells at low density in a well, capturing at a first time shortly after plating a series of vertically spaced-apart images of the well showing locations of the cells, capturing at a second, later time images of the same well showing locations of candidate cell colonies, determining a likelihood that the candidate colonies are monoclonal based on information in the first set of images, and, based on the likelihood, picking candidate colonies using a picking head for transfer to a target environment.

Cell colony picking system

System, including methods and apparatus, for identifying and picking spectrally distinct colonies. In an exemplary method, a filter may be received in an optical path extending from a light source to a grayscale image detector. The filter may be configured to increase an intensity difference between a first type of colony and a spectrally distinct second type of colony. Colonies including both types may be received in the optical path. An image of the colonies may be obtained with the grayscale image detector. At least one of the types of colony may be identified in the image. One or more colonies of the at least one type may be picked robotically.

System for identifying and picking spectrally distinct colonies

System, including methods and apparatus, for sample processing. In exemplary embodiments, the system comprises a plurality of devices to perform a protocol on sample holders supporting samples, and also comprises a control system that coordinates operation of the plurality of devices, such that the protocol is performed automatically. Each device of at least two of the plurality of devices may have one or more status lights configured to display a plurality of different visual indicators each indicating a different status of the device. The at least two devices may utilize a same indicator scheme as one another for each different status indicated by the visual indicators. In some embodiments, the indicator scheme is user-configurable. In some embodiments, the one or more status lights of at least one device are provided by one or more recessed light-emitting strips.

Sample-processing system with status lights

Growing community of inventors

Scotts Valley, CA, United States of America

Timothy Arthur Floto