PNNL starts building 30,800-sq-ft autonomous microbe lab for 2029

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory broke ground Oct. 20 in Richland, Washington, on a 30,800-square-foot autonomous biosciences facility that will put more than 100 automated instruments under a single software system and open them to outside researchers at no cost in 2029.

The facility, the Microbial Molecular Phenotyping Capability (M2PC), is 17 times the size of the 1,800-square-foot robotic microbe lab the Department of Energy commissioned ten months earlier. Custom software will run the connected instruments as one system: they will grow microbes, prepare samples, measure how microbes behave under precisely controlled conditions and link those observable traits to the molecular machinery inside cells.

PNNL plans to feed the results into computer models that predict the behavior of living systems, supporting biotechnology work on new materials, energy technologies and critical materials recovery. The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), the DOE user facility M2PC will expand, says the lab will compress experimental timeframes "from years to months or even weeks."

Who pays, and who gets access?

DOE's Office of Science approved M2PC in fiscal 2024 and funds it through its Biological and Environmental Research program, according to EMSL. Access runs through the standard user-facility route: when M2PC opens in 2029, researchers from universities, companies and other national labs can apply through EMSL's competitive proposal calls, at no charge.

PNNL claims M2PC will be one of the world's largest and most fully autonomous biosciences labs and the first of its kind "that will be available to the broader scientific community." That last claim is a competitive positioning statement from the operator, and outside groups will judge it against their own automation stacks once proposal calls open.

"M2PC will bring together PNNL's strengths in microbial science, automation and computing to dramatically accelerate our understanding of what microbes can do and how we put those capabilities to work for the nation," PNNL Director Deb Gracio said at the groundbreaking.

What is Ginkgo's role?

Ginkgo Bioworks, the Boston company that sells lab automation built on modular robotic carts and operates its own autonomous lab, Nebula, will supply M2PC's instruments. In December 2025, Ginkgo announced that PNNL had selected it through competitive procurement for a four-year contract worth up to $47 million to co-design, build and integrate the automation using its commercial hardware and software.

Ginkgo CEO Jason Kelly told R&D World in April that lab automation must move beyond fixed routines — which he compared to a subway — toward systems that handle variable experiments the way a self-driving car handles variable routes. Co-founder Reshma Shetty described Ginkgo's separate work with OpenAI on AI-designed experiments in February.

Is there a working prototype?

Yes, and it is already producing results. The lab DOE commissioned in December 2025, the Anaerobic Microbial Phenotyping Platform (AMP2), was also built by Ginkgo and serves as M2PC's prototype. AMP2 uses robotics to grow and study microbes that live without oxygen. It began operating in January, and in August it won a 2026 R&D 100 Award, with Ginkgo as co-developer. When PNNL announced the prototype, it said the lab would be available to scientists nationwide working with DOE.

AMP2 is also a working node in a larger program. The Orchestrated Platform for Autonomous Laboratories (OPAL), a four-lab collaboration led in part by PNNL, aims to link autonomous labs combining AI, robotics and automated equipment, and it sits within the Genesis Mission, DOE's initiative to use AI to accelerate scientific research.

At PNNL, OPAL researchers use AMP2 to map microbial genes to their functions. In the platform's first two months of operation, that work identified biological pathways that could improve critical mineral recovery under preferred laboratory growth conditions, according to a PNNL story — a measured result, though obtained under controlled lab conditions rather than in field-relevant settings. Separately, PNNL researchers have built AutoLabs, a self-correcting AI interface for a high-throughput liquid handler.

EMSL also plans for AMP2 to feed AI-ready data into public datasets on Science Central, its online platform for user projects and data.

The 2029 opening date gives university and industrial R&D groups roughly four years to prepare proposals for instrument time on a system whose $47 million automation contract is already committed.