PUDU

Lab automation tools have the capability to increase scientific throughput by reducing the time that researchers spend in the lab, reducing pipetting errors and standard deviation, and increasing metadata capture, traceability and reproducibility. One of the first barriers for lab automation is the cost of liquid handling robots. This has been addressed by companies like Opentrons that have substantially reduced the cost of liquid handling robotics by making them open source. Although a lot of liquid handling robotics have been implemented in research and industrial laboratories there is still a challenge in the training of new users and the creation of new protocols. PUDU is a Python package for liquid handling robot control in Synthetic Biology workflows. It is composed of a set of classes that represent different common protocols in cloning such as DNA assembly, transformation, test plate setup and even calibration. These protocols are easy to modify and adapt to different laboratory needs, reducing the barrier for new students and researchers to use the OT-2. Furthermore, PUDU connects to standards by accepting SBOL build designs as input and generating SBOL files of the protocol products as output.