What is PIXL?
An ultra-reliable and super-easy-to-use microbial colony picker.
PIXL automates imaging, colony recognition, colony selection, and picking; from Petri dishes to multiwell plates.
99% transfer efficiency
With agar surface detection on every pick, PIXL will never miss a colony, damage plates or splash cells all over the place.
Train everyone
90% of the functionality can be learned in as little
as 10 minutes. Long gone are the days of needing specialist technicians.
Maintain sterility
33,000 sterile, disposable tips in a single, low-cost PickupLine.
That’s <2 cents per pick, cheaper than a pipette tip.
“I chose PIXL because it is the most accurate and reliable colony picker that I’ve seen.
The throughput is slightly lower than some colony pickers, but it’s agar detection and transfer rates are better,
which is more important to us when picking our valuable libraries.”
Professor Patrick Cai, co-founder of the Edinburgh Genome Foundry,
has experience with a variety of different colony pickers on the market.
PIXL Workflows
Our software engineers understand your biology! We work closely with our scientific collaborators
to make sure our user interface thinks like you do.
Random Picking
Pick random colonies from circular, rectangular, or square plates to agar or liquid target plates. Customise your workflow with loads of sectoring, layout, and mixing options.
Colony Detection
Image and detect your colonies of interest and export experimental data without running a workflow.
Zone of Inhibition
Automatically identify central colonies, measure their inhibition zones, and pick colonies of interest.
Re-array
Pick colonies from user-defined locations and place them at user-defined positions. Customisable to incorporate your preferred labware or choice of targets.
Synthesising a designer yeast chromosome with the help of PIXL
Colony picking with PIXL.
1700+ happy microbiologists and counting.
Which PIXL setup is right for you?
Check out our full range of colony picking solutions and discover the perfect PIXL setup.
PIXL
Everyone’s favourite colony picker.
An ultra-reliable and super easy-to-use colony picker, capable of picking every colony as meticulously as you would.
PIXL Dark
For use with robotic arms and anaerobic chambers.
PIXL Dark comes with the added benefit of an automatic door, so it’s compatible with integration providers and also great for tight spaces.
ROTOR+ PIXL
The ultimate colony picking combo.
Combining ROTOR with PIXL lets you pick and re-plate at densities up to 6144 and at a rate of nearly a million colonies an hour.
Get in touch
Book a 30-minute slot to discuss your workflow with one of our product experts,
or ask us anything. 1700+ happy microbiologists and counting.
Frequently asked questions
Source plates can be 90mm and 150mm Petri dishes, OmniTray SBS rectangular plates or 120mm square plates. Target plates can be 96 and 384 multiwell, deep well and PCR plates and OmniTray rectangular plates with pinning densities ranging from 96-1536. Allowing you to create custom workflows to suit your lab’s needs.
Watch PIXL picking to a variety of plate types: https://www.singerinstruments.com/resource/versatile/
PIXL maintenance is very minimal and intuitive, with easy-to-follow instructions on the user interface. Changing the PickupLine is straightforward, minimising experimental downtime.
“The maintenance is really low, even changing the filament is a piece of cake. Everyone can use the machine.” Dr. Daniel Schindler from the Max Planck Institute
We have distributors across the world in:
China (Punmicro)
Japan (Asahi and MinervaTech)
Korea (Hoil Biomed)
Poland (A-BioTech)
Latin America (Mendel)
Taiwan (Major Instruments)
Australia (BioTools)
India, Nepal and Bangladesh (ILB)
UK & rest of the world (Singer Instruments)
If you have any questions regarding distribution please get in touch here.
PIXL was designed with automation in mind. We are happy to work with automation providers to integrate PIXL into larger workflows. Get in touch here to find out more information.
PIXL holds one source plate and four destination plates, however, in re-array mode, you can cherry-pick from multiple source plates to the same destination plate. Schedule a chat with a Scientific Advisor here to explore how to automate your workflow with PIXL.
PIXL can use both liquid and agar source plates, and it can pin to liquid and agar target plates in any combination.