Summary
Scientists at the University of Plymouth created the open-source LabEmbryoCam, a robotic tool to monitor aquatic embryo development. Using 3D printing and AI, it tracks growth, heart rate and environmental impacts on embryos, supporting research into climate change resilience. It’s scalable, versatile and already aiding global research efforts.
Key Takeaways
Scientists have used 3D-printed components to create a robotic instrument that can autonomously monitor the earliest stages of development in any aquatic species.
The LabEmbryoCam has been created over the past decade by biologists and technologists from the EmbryoPhenomics research group at the University of Plymouth.
It can be used to track embryonic development, a fundamental biological process that underpins the diversity of life on Earth, and provides an accessible and scalable means of visualising and measuring this process in large numbers of embryos simultaneously.
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Subscribe for FREEResearch in understanding how the earliest stages of life are impacted by environmental conditions has heightened urgency due to environmental change, and this instrument enables scientists to measure key features in developing animals such as heart rate, developmental rate and growth.
The team has released the LabEmbryoCam as an open-source project – with both hardware and software designs freely available and detailed in a new study published in HardwareX.
This has helped them create a versatile instrument that can be applied to a broad range of research challenges, and is accessible to researchers worldwide as a platform through which they can adapt it to suit their own needs.
The team has established a dedicated phenomics facility of LabEmbryoCam instruments to support the EmbryoPhenomics group’s research, enabling the simultaneous screening of more than 3,000 embryos to address pressing global research challenges.
In addition to licensing the LabEmbryoCam as open source, they are also now selling it via Phenomyx CIC, a Community Interest Company founded to maximise the reach, accessibility and impact of this key innovation among researchers and educators. The CIC’s mission is to support researchers applying phenomics approaches to the study of developing animals.
From Phenomyx CIC’s base at Plymouth Science Park, components are 3D printed and assembled, with the instrument already having been sold to clients in both the UK and USA.
Furthermore, the LabEmbryoCam accompanied researchers from the University on an expedition to Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean, to support groundbreaking research on the early life stages of the Christmas Island red crab.
Reference: Ibbini Z, Bruning M, Allili S, et al. LabEmbryoCam: An opensource phenotyping system for developing aquatic animals. HardwareX. 2024;20:e00602. doi: 10.1016/j.ohx.2024.e00602
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