A research team from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed a fully automated "Digital Colony Picker" (DCP). This device identifies and retrieves high-performance microbial clones by simultaneously monitoring their growth and metabolite production—eliminating the need for culture plates, sampling needles, or manual picking. The study was published in Nature Communications on Oct. 10.