The Qbot is a multi-tasking robot capable of high speed bacterial colony picking, gridding and rearraying. Bacterial colonies are plated on 22 X 22 cm agar coated dishes. The robot can efficiently image and pick between 3,000 &Mac246; 10,000 colonies from a single dish, at 2,500&Mac246; 3,000 colonies per hour. Once picked, colonies are deposited in 384 well Q-plates pre-filled with growth medium. After a 16-24 hour incubation at 37 degrees Celsius, the Q-plates are used for gridding. The Qbot will inoculate 22 X 22 cm nylon filters in a predetermined pattern, in duplicate. The robot can accommodate 15 nylon filters during a run. 4X4, 5X5 and 6X6 arrays are commonly used with 28,800 colonies gridded in duplicate on a single filter if using a 5X5 array. After the filters have been gridded they are placed on top of 22 X 22 cm agar coated dishes and incubated at 37 degrees Celsius overnight. A standard colony lysis and nucleic acid coupling procedure is preformed as a last step, before the filters are ready for use.

 Info from the manufacturer