Patent ID: 8034625

Claim:
A method for automated selection of an animal cell colony expressing a protein of interest comprising the steps of: (a) providing, in a tissue culture medium, a plurality of animal cell colonies of a given type which express the protein of interest; (b) contacting the animal cell colonies with a labelled protein which binds to the protein of interest and produces brightness, such that brightness of the animal cell colonies correlates with the amount of protein of interest expressed by the animal cell colony when visualised; (c) arranging the animal cell colonies in an apparatus having machine vision and image processing functions; and (d) capturing an image visualising the cell colonies with the machine vision function and selecting at least one animal cell colony with the image processing function from among the plurality of animal cell colonies expressing the protein of interest for picking, in which the at least one animal cell colony is selected for picking according to the amount of protein of interest expressed by the animal cell colony as detected through the level of brightness of the animal cell colonies in the image.