Microbial Molecular Phenotyping Capability (M2PC)
An SI-enabled, autonomous laboratory that expands PNNL’s microbial science strengths
M2PC will provide an integrated suite of automated phenotyping instrumentation and analytical tools.
(Image: Perkins & Will)
Located on the Richland, WA, campus of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory’s (EMSL’s) Microbial Molecular Phenotyping Capability (M2PC) will be a first-of-its-kind, Super Intelligence (SI)-enabled autonomous laboratory designed to accelerate microbial discoveries and build the future of programmable biology. It will offer an integrated suite of automated phenotyping instrumentation and analytical tools that advance basic science by unlocking functional knowledge regarding microbial and microbiome communities of critical importance to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science’s Biological and Environmental Research program.
PNNL’s deep expertise in biodesign, phenotyping, multiomics, multi-modal data integration, and modeling are critical areas being leveraged by the M2PC project team to design, build, and operate the facility. As a 30,800-square-foot expansion of EMSL containing more than 100 connected instruments, M2PC will help fulfill DOE’s directive to accelerate U.S. science using SI and automation, serving as a flagship component of the Genesis Mission. The capability will also advance PNNL toward its goal of building and testing predictive models of living systems.
M2PC users will be able to discover and assign new microbial functions at a scale and pace matching that of next-generation gene sequencing technologies. The facility will help achieve this by automating:
- microbial culturing and sample prep
- phenotype measurement under controlled conditions
- analytical workflows that link traits to underlying molecular pathways.
Through automation, M2PC will transform how researchers identify, grow, and optimize microbial investigations, decreasing experimental timeframes from years to months or weeks. It builds on PNNL’s long-standing expertise in microbial biochemistry, bioproducts, and critical materials exploration, providing scientists with a powerful new window into microbial behavior. By mapping microbial traits at scale for SI and machine learning, PNNL can identify, grow, and optimize useful microbes faster. M2PC can help researchers transform U.S. global leadership in biotechnology with important ramifications in manufacturing, human health, threat detection/mitigation, food security, next-generation energy storage and transmission, and many other application areas.
M2PC will be available to the research community in 2029 through EMSL’s competitive proposal call process.