I, for one, welcome our robot overlords.

Finlay Maguire

December 27th 2014

Science sucks

Sucks to do
Sucks to do
Lots of bad science is being done
Lots of bad science is being done

Technology is improving

2nd generation DNA sequencers
2nd generation DNA sequencers
3rd generation DNA sequencer
3rd generation DNA sequencer

Aside about nanopore

The robots are rising

and that is cool
and that is cool
very cool
very cool
and they are our friends
and they are our friends

But that is still not enough

Time to get SAAS-y

Science-as-a-Service
Science-as-a-Service
  • web-based on-demand remote life science lab
  • live results
  • currently expanding... jobs available... tons of start-up funding

Robots + Internet

    run = requests.post(url("%s/runs" % PROJECT), json.dumps({
      "run": {
        "title": "Synthesize pri-F",
        "request": {
          "type": "synthesis",
          "sequence": {
            "sequence": "acatctgagcgagcgac",
            "name": "pri-F"
          }
        }
      }
    }), headers = headers).json()
    print run['id']
Transcriptic
Transcriptic

Robots + Internet + Life

    {
      "title": "Incubate bacteria",
      "protocol": {
        "refs": {
          "plate1": {
            "id": "ct139xhhctkphy",
            "store": { "where": "cold_4" }
          }
        },
        "instructions": [
          {
            "op": "incubate",
            "object": "plate1",
            "where": "warm_37",
            "duration": "2:hour",
            "shaking": true
          }
        ]
      }
    }

In summary:

  • Science sucks to do
  • Robots are awesome
  • Robots + the internet are even more awesome
  • Robots + internet + machine learning + utilitarian political philosophies = Bow down human worms.