Press release summary
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has broken ground on a 30,800-square-foot autonomous biosciences laboratory designed for high-throughput microbial phenotyping. The Microbial Molecular Phenotyping Capability, or M2PC, will expand the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory on PNNL’s Richland, Washington, campus. Construction is expected to take about two years.
PNNL said the facility will contain more than 100 connected, automated instruments supplied by Ginkgo Bioworks. Customized software is expected to coordinate tasks such as growing microbes, preparing samples, controlling experimental conditions, measuring microbial behavior, and linking observable traits with cellular molecular mechanisms. The connected system is intended to let researchers use results from one round of experiments to guide subsequent work.
For laboratory readers, M2PC represents a large-scale test of integrated automation rather than isolated robotic workcells. Its design could improve throughput, reproducibility, and data continuity across microbial culture, sample preparation, phenotyping, and analysis. The facility is not yet operational. PNNL plans to open it to the broader research community in 2029 at no cost through the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory’s competitive proposal process.
Original source: PNNL’s Oct. 22, 2026, news release.
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