Autonomous imaging robot plays a crucial role in assessing embryos’ response to environmental change

The opensource LabEmbryoCam uses 3D-printed components to form a robotic microscope and is the result of over a decade of research at the University

LabEmbryoCam facility at Plymouth Science Park

Mr Alan Williams

Media and Communications Manager

Corporate Communications (Marketing and Communications)

6 December 2024

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.

Research 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.

Dr Oliver Tills , Senior Research Fellow at the University of Plymouth and founder of the EmbryoPhenomics group, is the study’s senior author.

We developed the LabEmbryoCam to provide an accessible window on how animals put themselves together, and what impact the environment has on this. It capitalises on enabling technologies such as 3D printing and AI. The LabEmbryoCam is enabling us, and others, to address complex research questions that were not otherwise possible. Our opensource ethos makes the capabilities that are central to our own research available to others.

Phenomics – the acquisition of high-dimensional organismal data on an organism-wide scale, is an approach increasingly used in medicine and the crop sciences. The LabEmbryoCam enables users to apply phenomics during the most dynamic and often sensitive period of life.

The instruments are already proving pivotal in understanding how embryos’ function and these responses differ markedly compared to later life. This is already proving critical in helping us not only understand the effects of global and ocean warming on individual species, but also to identify species, populations and individuals that are resilient to conditions we are likely to see on our planet in the future.

Dr Oliver Tills
Senior Research Fellow

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.

The full study – Ibbini, Tills et al: LabEmbryoCam: An opensource phenotyping system for developing aquatic animals – is published in HardwareX, DOI: 10.1016/j.ohx.2024.e00602.

Mr Alan Williams

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