Harry Rickerby

Spend a lot of time making plate maps?

We hooked up our plate mapper to our AI copilot in
@brieflybio.bsky.social. It’s pretty fun.

Try it here: briefly.bio?utm_source=b...

Their shared lab protocols there too, so new lab members can easily find out how to get started.

Take a look here: app.briefly.bio/portfolio/Ag...

This includes automating a phage isolation and characterisation platform on Opentrons OT2, as well as hosting JHU's 2025 iGEM team.

From next year, Agara will share some of their community projects on their @brieflybio.bsky.social portfolio page, so you can find out what they’re up to.

It gives them the freedom to delve into their own research ideas, learn new techniques and hone existing ones.

Meet Agara Bio, an undergraduate-led community lab 🧪

Agara Bio is an open bio-lab run by undergraduate students at @jhu.edu.

By making our tool free and open, we want to reduce and remove barriers to this kind of collaboration, and make it easier for scientists to trade smaller, useful pieces of work – whether that’s inside their lab, or with the community.

We want to make that collaboration easier. It could be sharing a complete protocol for an optimised method, or sharing your research portfolio so others can get inspired.

However, while it often doesn’t feel like it, science is fundamentally collaborative – we’re constantly building on top of the work of others, even if it’s the old post-doc’s scribbles.

Here’s why we’re doing this.

Science, especially in academia, is often a lonely endeavour. Tucked away in the corner of a lab somewhere. Struggling.

You don’t have to wait for an invite, or even have to have a call with our annoying CEO. Just head to our website, create your account and start capturing and sharing your lab work.

We have a Christmas present for you 🎁

@brieflybio.bsky.social is now free and open to academics.

Sign up here: tinyurl.com/2vahxac7

Doing sc-RNA sequencing? As part of his research, Nikolay Zolotarev has developed and optimised a number of protocols for nuclei isolation and RNA extraction.

Check them out on his @brieflybio.bsky.social portfolio – they're open for the community re-use, and adapt 🔓

tinyurl.com/4zecyz8a

Gotta extract some PBMCs?
Or run a Seahorse cell metabolic analysis?

@vcjdeboer.bsky.social lab’s Portfolio is a goldmine of protocols 🔥

Based at 🇳🇱 Wageningen University, they study the inner workings of mitochondria and how mitochondrial metabolites communicate with epigenetic machinery.

What's your lab personality? We need all sorts to push science forward, so let's find out which box you fit into. It's just for fun!

If you haven’t already, take the test (bit.ly/4fOKwte) and find out your lab type. And no, it isn’t any more scientific than this analysis.

But yes, I still wanna hear what result you got (architect for the record).

Ask around your lab. Statistically, you probably know someone who has tried to develop an algorithm to solve The Balanced Centrifuge Problem (bit.ly/3V5yB1U).

And by the looks of it, quite a few have found a solution too.

What about how you load your centrifuge?

To the 42%… Well… Mayyybe there’s a band?. No judgement! But erm, maybe lets run it again to be sure? 😉

And what about once we have some data? With how much caution do folks exercise when evaluating the results of this PCR?

Especially surprising given that most prefer their pipette to their laptop. That’s restraint.

So most of us want answers. How do we approach getting them?

Mostly, with due caution! 62% take the time to mull things over before rushing to test their brilliant new idea.

Interestingly, a decent chunk (44%) of those hoping for clear answers can’t help but be curious about that fly. How did it get there? What’s its story? Why does it love my ointment so much?

The majority just hate the fly. I hope they give it a fair trial before they exclude it.

And how do we feel when a fly appears in the ointment – an outlier that threatens that clear answer?

OK, back to the global analysis.

What are we in science for?

We spend months, planning, designing, troubleshooting, and analysing experiments. It seems like the vast majority of us really just crave a clear answer to the questions we set out to answer.

Compared to the average scientist, jumbled pipette tip boxers are:
- more intrigued by the outliers (+6%). Well maybe we have to be.
- more into their laptops than their pipettes (+7%)… To no one’s surprise.
- more likely to be late to the bus (+8%). Messy lab, messy life.

OK. Not that many. Stop judging us.

Ouch. I feel personally attacked. But how many of us are there out there?

A few months ago, we @brieflybio.bsky.social created a silly personality test (bit.ly/4fOKwte) for scientists. We ended up with over 5000 responses. We couldn’t just leave this precious data locked up at castle Briefly.

So. What does your pipette tip box say about you?

Thank you :)

Would love to be on here if that's OK :)