Dec 21, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
The Pioreactor has onboard heating and thermoregulation. This is great for most microbes who enjoy a slightly warmer than room temperature environment. However, sometimes you want a cooler environment. The Pioreactor can't create produce a cool environment, but you can place the Pioreactor in a cold environment and then let the onboard heating heat to a precise temperature.
Dec 08, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
We think biology products should be accessible. As lifelong biology enthusiasts, we hit a brick wall with other bioreactors on the market. Commercial bioreactors were out of our reach, with high prices and unnecessary features that were actually a liability. Unable to monitor our microbial cultures efficiently, our projects stalled. That's why we created Pioreactor.
Oct 24, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
We love compactness. We love when things just fit together. We love protocols! We love open source design! Which is why we put all four of these ideas into our new Pioreactor dosing platform.
Oct 04, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
Directed evolution is the technique of controlling an organism's evolutionary trajectory such that its descendants have more of a desired properties. Most often, the engineers will have a strict control of the organism's environment. By controlling the environment and responding to the organism's simultaneous adaption, an organism can be directed to have novel or desirable properties. In particular, the directed evolution of microorganisms is more easily achieved due to their short generation time, high cell density, and isolated environments.
Sep 26, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
With the end of September approaching, we're on track to soon assemble and send off our first batch of Pioreactors — and it also marks the end of my internship! In this blog post, I'll discuss my experiences over the summer and announce some fun projects we've completed in the last few weeks.
Aug 29, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
One of the greatest strengths of the Pioreactor its modularity; both on the hardware and software sides. Previously, you've seen how we can add physical pieces like pumps and LEDs to customize your Pioreactor. To use these pieces (or even change how we use basic actions), we can create and install plugins!
Jul 18, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
Inspired by this paper by Knutson et al. (2018), we created a new temperature automation that cycles temperature as a sine wave between 30°C and 40°C over 24 hours. With this new automation, and in our expanded Pioreactor/turbidostat system, we grew some yeast over the weekend – and the findings are quite interesting!
Jul 07, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
We've been working with a cluster of prototype Pioreactors with slight build modifications, but we have settled on an optimized design. As such, we've recently updated our documentation site to include a new hardware setup section in our User Guide. Check it out!
Jun 17, 2022
Posted by: Cameron Davidson-Pilon
We’ve been 3D printing many tools to help us assemble all these Pioreactors as we prepare to launch our first batch. Things like cutting circles into thermal material, assembling caps with tubes/grommets, and even aligning the spinning PCB all use 3D printed tools we designed! You can say our Pioreactors are almost artisanal.
