Yes, the Pioreactor does work in cold, Canadian, winters!

Yes, the Pioreactor does work in cold, Canadian, winters!
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. 

Introducing Pioreactor

Introducing Pioreactor
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.

What is (lab) directed evolution?

What is (lab) directed evolution?
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.

One last blogpost from your favourite employee #3

One last blogpost from your favourite employee #3
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. 

More on Plugins

More on Plugins
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! 

Using custom automations to control your Pioreactor

Using custom automations to control your Pioreactor
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! 

Pioreactor dev blog #19 - New hardware pages

Pioreactor dev blog #19 - New hardware pages
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!

Pioreactor dev blog #18 - Vial holder

Pioreactor dev blog #18 - Vial holder
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.