New ProtoCOL System For Rapid Quality Assurance of Vital Vaccines

17 January 2003 Cambridge, UK: Synbiosis, a world-leading manufacturer of automated microbiological systems, today introduced its new ProtoCOL Version 4 colony counting software for food microbiology applications. This software comes with a range of features designed to improve accuracy by eliminating the common problem of scoring food particles as colonies during counting.

Food microbiologists can choose an advanced pre and post-incubation method to account for unknown debris, where the ProtoCOL software automatically subtracts pre from post-incubation results to display a total count. This solution is quick and simple to use and allows both counts to be logged.

Where microbiologists know their food debris is a different size to their colonies or is non-circular, they can use two different methods in the ProtoCOL version 4 software to eliminate them, thus ensuring precise colony counts. With the Area Limits feature, either a suitably sized colony on the image can be selected or a known value can be entered and any particles that do not fit the size criteria are not scored. Using the software’s Circularity Factor, non-circular food particles such as meat fibres are automatically excluded from the final result.

For microbiologists that prefer to mark larger pieces of debris manually, the mouse can be used to draw round them on the image. These regions are eliminated from the count and for added accuracy, the area beneath them is automatically subtracted from the plate area when calculating the final result.

Simon Johns, International Product Manager for Synbiosis explained: “Often microbiologists cannot remove food particles from their samples prior to plate incubation. Using ProtoCOL Version 4 software offers them a number of effective options to solve this problem, without compromising on productivity. The software will be especially useful in quality control laboratories, where food with a limited shelf-life has to be checked quickly for potentially harmful microbes.”

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Note to Editors

About Synbiosis

Synbiosis is a world-leading supplier of integrated imaging solutions for automatic counting and analysis of microbial colonies and zone measurement. Synbiosis’s ProtoCOL systems are installed in food, pharmaceutical, environmental and research microbiology laboratories world-wide. Synbiosis uses established distribution channels to market its products internationally.

Synbiosis, founded in 1998, is a division of the Synoptics Group based in Cambridge, UK. The Group’s other divisions, Syncroscopy and Syngene, specialise in digital imaging solutions for microscopy and molecular biology applications respectively. Synoptics currently employs 50 people in its UK and US subsidiary operation and has profitable revenue of almost $10 million, which continues to grow rapidly.