Manually picking colonies from an agar plate or re-arraying a genomic library in microplates one toothpick at a time is a very slow and tedious task and can lead to repetitive motion injuries. We have invented a simple hand tool that reduces the repetitive motion by a factor of twelve and greatly accelerates the picking and placement process.  It also eliminates the difficulty of handling toothpicks aseptically.  The Colony Picker is amazingly easy to handle while making precise "picks."  We also have developed a simple system of keeping track of the wells that have been inoculated.  See our VP 376.
 

The Colony Picker is operated with just one hand and the picking position remains the same for all pins thus providing a consistent hand/eye coordinated target.  Once all 12 pins have been used to pick colonies or re-array a library they are inoculated in a 96  well microplate. The pins are sterilized by dipping in ETOH and flaming.  The Colony Picker is designed for right handed operation.

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Download Video of VP 373 in action
(mpeg movie- 36.6MB)

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Rack for Colony Picker

We also provide a rack that holds 4 Colony Pickers in every other row of a 96 well microplate. After four rows have been inoculated the microplate is shifted 9 mm and the remaining 4 rows are inoculated.   The rack system provides a fail safe system against double inoculation of the same row of wells.  The Colony Picker and the rack are compatible with conventional and deep well microplates.