In the science of science and technology, small studies are the small labs where we develop the big ideas. Imagine a world where experiments take place in tiny vessels called bioreactors. These bioreactors are essentially small, controlled worlds where scientists can test things out and see how they grow and react in space. But there’s a crucial question: What is telling to know from this sort of research? Is it the material that the bioreactor is constructed from, is it the built-in automatic control system that manages everything, the software expression system that lives within? These are the questions at KNIK ask ourselves all the time. We have our little niche, and we want to make sure that our bioreactor vessel equipment is helping scientists achieve the best results.
About the Automatic Control
Consider Dicking in a Bioreactor Imagine having to dick everything in a bioreactor yourself. That would mean adjusting temperature, balance, levels, and making everything perfect all the time. It’s exhausting and susceptible to error. It’s all managed though remote control. “It’s as if you have built this super-smart robot to do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and it gets it perfect every time. It provides more reliable experiments and saves the scientist enormous labor. We’ve found at KNIK, that as a result small studies are churning so much faster and with so much more ease because of it. You are in effect giving scientists a tool that enables them to concentrate on the substance, while the machine handles the routine.
But what is the bioreactor vessel itself made of?
Is it important? Well, yes, it is. Things of all kinds can change the way things grow inside the bioreactor. A material may be reactive toward what it contains or entirely unreactive. Choosing the right material is also key to ensuring your experiment is not influenced by your container itself. (Kind of like finding your house plant’s home planter at home. If a pot is made of material that is not mixed well with the plant, the plant may grow crooked. KNIK realizes that the material for the bioreactor vessel can also be the basis for a significant part of the success of a study under scale-down conditions.
The Performance of The Bioreactor
When you think about what automation can do for the performance of the bioreactor, it’s quite substantial. It’s possible for an automated system to provide exactly the right conditions inside the bioreactor, or to change those conditions exactly as desired. That includes that the temperature, pH and other key variables are choosing just right. It’s kind of like having a perfect recipe that is executed to the letter every time. It’s also easier to trust or forecast, for that matter something if everything can be controlled. We understand that this level of accuracy can translate into the discovery or the failure to find a cure. It’s as if we have a magic wand, and we can get there, and now scientists can see exactly what they need to see.
Balance of Automation and The Material
It’s a doozy when it comes to the balance of automation and the material the bio-reactor vessel is made from. You’d think that’s two things, but really they’re two sides of the same coin in developing good study habits. Some material restraints can be relaxed by the “atomic” control of automation. For example, if a material is able to sense temperature, the automated system may adjust conditions faster than a human would. We believe knowing how the two interact is crucial to maximizing the quality of the research. It’s like having two teammates who can compensate for each other’s weaknesses.
Summary
Finally, if we think of the importance of automated control for small lab bioreactor characterizations we end up with the same relevance for small-scale studies. The conditions that need to be met for that are so specific that it would be very difficult to maintain manually without automation. Errors would higher and findings less dependable. Automation can provide consistency and precision that human automation just can’t match. At KNIK, we have seen just how much help automation can be. It’s a bit like having a pro looking over your shoulder at every step, to make sure nothing goes wrong. Automation not only spares you the tedium of tasks, but it makes time-sensitive, more reliable and more complex execution of those tasks possible.