Extended Data Fig. 6: Growth of different species and their replicates when following the Q-PHAST methodology.

a–c, Different yeast species: Nakaseomyces bacilisporus (a), Pichia cactophila (b) and Saccharomyces uvarum (c). d–f, Different bacterial species: Escherichia coli DH5 alpha (d), a clinical strain of Klebsiella CMA2 (e) and a clinical strain of Stenotrophomonas SNB_C1 (f), were grown from single colonies in an MP. The yeast MP contained YPD, whereas the bacterial MP contained LB. According to the protocol, they were inoculated into the EP with YPD agar or LB agar, respectively, and incubated on the scanners for 48 h for yeast and 24 h for bacteria, both at 30 °C. The image shows the automated results generated by Q-PHAST, provided in extended_outputs/growth_curves_and_images, where the growth of these strains at three time points can be observed along with their growth curves. Note that there are a few spots incorrectly boxed (e.g., the red square (D9) in N. bacilisporus (a) or the orange square (B12) in P. cactophila (b), where growth is only inferred within the box. This may lead to slightly inaccurate growth measurements, which we consider as an unavoidable limitation of such image-based growth measurements. Although this is an infrequent artefact, it should be taken into account. We encourage users to check out such plots for their experiments, to be able to flag as ‘bad spots’ (in the input PL) the incorrectly placed ones.