| Title: |
Open-source cell culture automation system with integrated cell counting for passaging microplate cultures |
| Authors: |
Courville, Greg; Vaid, Shivanshi; Toruño, Alexis; Lebel, Paul; Cabrera, Joana P; Raghavan, Preethi; Jacobsen, Axel; Bell, George R R; Leonetti, Manuel D; Gómez-Sjöberg, Rafael |
| Contributors: |
Desai, Tejal; Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco |
| Source: |
PNAS Nexus ; volume 4, issue 12 ; ISSN 2752-6542 |
| Publisher Information: |
Oxford University Press (OUP) |
| Publication Year: |
2025 |
| Description: |
Tissue culture in 96-well microplates is conventionally a tedious, highly manual process sensitive to individual technique and experimenter error. Here, we describe the Automated Cell Culture Splitter, a system for passaging plates of adherent or suspension cells, for routine culture maintenance or specialized applications such as seeding plates for microscopy. The system is built around the Opentrons OT-2 liquid handling robot and incorporates a novel on-deck imaging-based cell counter which allows it to compensate for density disparities across a source plate and control the number of cells seeded on a per-well basis. We find this solution can cut hands-on time by 61% and the results compare favorably to our existing manual cell culture processes in terms of both seeding density precision and biological outcomes, achieving a control of seeding density with a well-to-well coefficient of variation under 11%. The system is designed to be adaptable and an accessible entry point into automation for high-throughput cell culture; to that end, all of the source code and hardware designs are released under open source licenses. |
| Document Type: |
article in journal/newspaper |
| Language: |
English |
| DOI: |
10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf385 |
| Availability: |
https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf385; https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article-pdf/4/12/pgaf385/66141754/pgaf385.pdf |
| Rights: |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.D0B7606E |
| Database: |
BASE |