Plant Science 178 (2010) 476–484 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Plant Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/plantsci Review Future and frontiers of automated screening in plant sciences Üner Kolukisaoglu ∗ , Kerstin Thurow CELISCA (Center for Life Science Automation), University of Rostock, Friedrich-Barnewitz-Strasse 8, D-18119 Rostock, Germany article info Article history: Received 15 December 2009 Received in revised form 16 March 2010 Accepted 22 March 2010 Available online 27 March 2010 Keywords: Robotics in plant sciences High-throughput screening Automated genetical analysis Automated plant phenotyping High-throughput plant analytics Automation in chemical genetics abstract The automation of several laboratory processes and procedures did not only maximise their throughput, content and velocity, but also led to higher levels of analysis and research in many fields of life sciences. Unfortunately, the extent of automated workflows in plant sciences and biotechnology is rather low compared to the automation of applications in drug discovery and related fields. The demands for plant associated processes and analyses with higher throughput and content rates are constantly raising, mainly due to the increased interest in plants and plant-derived products in the fields of nutrition, energy and feedstock utilization. The automation of these procedures is hampered mostly by plant-specific factors. In the present review the state of automation in different fields of plant science and biotechnology will be presented together with novel trends in high-throughput analysis. A central conclusion drawn from these observations is the necessity of central automation facilities in academic research institutions to establish and enhance the utilization of automated screening methods also in plant sciences. © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents 1. A short introduction on automation in life sciences ................................................................................................ 476 2. Different fields and applications of automated analysis in plant sciences ......................................................................... 478 2.1. Automation of applications in genetic analysis and plant breeding ........................................................................ 478 2.2. Plant phenomics and automated image analysis ........................................................................................... 478 2.3. Automated approaches to analyze plant metabolism and biochemistry ................................................................... 479 2.4. Chemical genetic screens and the potential of automation ................................................................................. 480 3. Conclusions and future prospects ................................................................................................................... 482 References ........................................................................................................................................... 483 1. A short introduction on automation in life sciences The automation of different processes in life science labora- tories saw a great development within the last 15 years. Actual market surveys predict an annual market growth of 10% for labo- ratory automation systems between 2005 and 2015 [1]. The main driver for this development was definitely drug discovery and drug development. Drug development is expensive in terms of costs and time involved in the entire process. Methods of high-throughput screening and high-content screening have become the workhorses of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies’ drug discovery efforts, with expanding responsibilities and increasing pressure to screen more targets with better compound libraries to find high- quality leads. ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 (0) 381 4987810; fax: +49 (0) 381 4987802. E-mail address: uener.kolukisaoglu@uni-rostock.de (Ü. Kolukisaoglu). High-throughput screening (HTS) refers to the integration of technologies to assay thousands of compounds rapidly in search of biological activity in a disease target for drug discovery. In the mean time, HTS has been widely implemented throughout phar- maceutical R&D [2]. High-throughput screening assays are typically performed within a single well of a microplate; each well represents a single data point. The definition of “high-throughput screening” is generally accepted to mean performing 10,000–100,000 com- pounds per day. Throughputs above this number are considered to be ultrahigh-throughput screening (uHTS) [3]. HTS has tradition- ally involved biochemical assays that measure how compounds bind to targeted molecules or how compounds inhibit enzyme activities. These assays can be performed as part of automated, high-throughput procedures using 96-well or 384-well microtiter plates and for uHTS such as 1536-well plates or even higher den- sity. The assay design affects the extent to which automation can be used, the cost of the screen, the sensitivity, and the ability to find hits [4]. Improvements and innovations in assay development include the development of technologies that reduce the number 0168-9452/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.plantsci.2010.03.006