Q1 2020 Recap: Data and Feature Updates

As we continuously evolve BenchSci to help scientists run more successful experiments, we launched several updates based on your feedback throughout the first quarter of 2020. To give you a snapshot of the data and feature releases, we’re proud to present a summary of updates that we rolled out between January and March, 2020. Read on to find out what they are and how you can leverage them for your research!

AI-Assisted Reagent Selection platform

When we started BenchSci in 2015, we focused on building an AI-Assisted platform to help scientists find the best antibodies for their experiments. As scientists ourselves, however, we also understand that experiments need more than just antibodies. That’s why we launched the AI-Assisted Reagent Selection platform to help you find the best RNAi and protein reagents based on published data. Available to our enterprise customers, the reagent platform includes:

Antibodies:

• 8.01M+ products
• 234 suppliers
• 11.9M+ published data points

RNAi Reagents:

• 12.5M+ products
• 28 suppliers
• 628K+ published data points

Protein Reagents:

• 1.78M+ products
• 82 suppliers
• 2.91M+ published data points

New applications and SARS-CoV-2 data

We’re committed to supporting R&D initiatives that are at the forefront of lifesaving discoveries. To do so, we make sure we’re constantly adding state-of-the-art research applications and collecting research data that are urgently needed by the scientific community.

In response to the recent COVID-19 outbreak, we launched the following initiatives:

• Collecting new reagents and publications: We curated, processed, and documented all new publication data and reagents specifically associated with SARS-CoV-2
• Repurposing existing reagents: We performed in silico analyses of existing antibody, RNAi, and protein reagents to find those that can be repurposed
• Mining data for insights: We used targeted data mining strategies to identify pertinent publications and extract relevant experimental data from them

These data are made publicly available at the link below to advance research efforts against COVID-19

In addition, as requested by scientists, we added 3 new applications to our platform:

• CUT&RUN (Cleavage Under Targets & Release Using Nuclease)
• REAP-Seq (RNA Expression And Protein sequencing)
• CITE-Seq (Cellular Indexing of Transcriptomes and Epitopes by sequencing)

CUT&RUN is a more efficient alternative to ChIP-Seq for epigenomic profiling studies, whereas REAP- and CITE-Seq use multiplexed quantification of the proteome and transcriptome at single-cell resolution so you can see how protein and mRNA levels change in response to treatment.

New Filters

As we add more data to our platform, it is equally important for scientists to quickly identify data that are the most relevant to their specific studies. Based on feedback from scientists, we added the following new filters to our platform to help you easily narrow down your search results:

Sequence filter to identify products with known sequences:

• Immunogen/epitope sequence for antibodies
• Oligonucleotide sequence for RNAi reagents
• Amino acid sequence for protein reagents

Antibody isotype filter to find :

• Specific classes of antibodies
• Antibody fragments

Additional antibody specification filter to review products by:

• Purification methods (ie. affinity purified, protein A purified)
• Form (ie. lyophilized, serum)
• Solution components (ie. azide-free, BSA-free)

Product Comparison and Export

Last but not least, by popular request, we enabled features on our platform to help you compare products by their specifications, and export them to share with your colleagues or for record keeping on your electronic lab notebooks.

That sums up the data and feature updates we rolled out in Q1! Let us know in the comments below how we can further improve the platform for your studies.

We have many more exciting updates planned in Q2, so be sure to subscribe to our blog to stay on top of our latest releases.