A robotic system for automated genetic manipulation and analysis of .

The nematode is one of the most widely studied organisms in biology due to its small size, rapid life cycle, and manipulable genetics. Research with depends on labor-intensive and time-consuming manual procedures, imposing a major bottleneck for many studies, especially for those involving large numbers of animals. Here, we describe a general-purpose tool, WormPicker, a robotic system capable of performing complex genetic manipulations and other tasks by imaging, phenotyping, and transferring on standard agar media.