When the sun dips below the Pacific ocean, the white domes of Mount Wilson Observatory can still be seen to the east. Perched on the San Gabriel crest, the Observatory receives the final kisses of sunlight at the end of every day.

w ^母鸡太平洋太阳下面骤降，威尔逊山天文台的白色圆顶仍然可以看到到东部。 天文台栖息在圣盖博峰顶上，每天结束时都会收到阳光的最后一吻。

There is not a window near my bench, but I can sense the shift from day to night by the lulls in conversation, the departing bodies, and the long shadows that drape across the laboratory.

我的长凳附近没有窗户，但是我可以感觉到谈话的平静，离开的尸体以及笼罩在实验室中的长长的阴影使白天到黑夜的转变。

With pipette in hand, the wall clock reads “8”. Still, I set up my experiment, moving tip to liquid, liquid to cells, tip to trash. Repeat ad infinitum.

手持移液器，挂钟显示为“ 8”。 尽管如此，我还是进行了实验，将吸头移至液体，将吸头移至细胞，将吸头移至垃圾。 无限次重复广告 。

Experiments are a drudgery, and I easily lose track of time. My mind inevitably wanders, I make a mistake and am forced to discard the experiment. So I begin again, ad infinitum.

实验是一项繁重的工作，我很容易浪费时间。 我的思维不可避免地会徘徊，我犯了一个错误，被迫放弃了实验。 因此，我无限地重新开始。

At times like this — after the sun has fallen, but I remain rooted to my chair — I think about my travails, and consider whether they could be solved with a benevolent robot.

在这样的时候(太阳下山之后，但我仍然固守在椅子上)，我在思考自己的苦难，并考虑是否可以用一个仁慈的机器人解决它们。

“I do my experiments from home, actually,” said Dr. Harrison Steel, the creator of a new device called Chi.Bio, through my computer screen.

“实际上，我在家中进行实验，”名为Chi.Bio的新设备的创建者哈里森·斯蒂尔 ( Harrison Steel)博士通过计算机屏幕说。

Steel’s room in Oxford is spotless, so much so that Room Rater might be inclined to give it a ten out of ten. His answers are neat and polished, without a single ‘umm’ or ‘ahh’ injected.

牛津大学Steel的房间一尘不染，以至于Room Rater可能倾向于在十分之十中给它。 他的回答简洁明了，没有注入任何“ umm”或“ ahh”。

When Steel was a PhD student, many of his experiments felt banal. He, too, has felt the pain of solitude in the laboratory — the lone scientist, hunched over an experiment, after all others have departed.

斯蒂尔(Steel)在读博士学位时，他的许多实验都显得平庸。 他也曾在实验室里感到孤独的痛苦-在所有其他人都离开之后，这位孤独的科学家弯腰着一个实验。

“For days, I would have to measure and dilute cells, which is very tedious if you’re doing it by hand,” said Steel. “Now, after I set everything up, I can sit at home and watch each of my graphs and add chemicals or turn on lights and take measurements.”

“几天来，我将不得不测量和稀释细胞，如果您用手做的话，这将非常繁琐，” Steel说。 “现在，当我完成所有设置后，我可以坐在家里看着我的每张图表，添加化学药品或打开灯并进行测量。”

In other words, Steel has figured out a way to avoid the evening drudgery that plagues so many biologists.

换句话说，斯蒂尔已经找到了一种避免困扰如此多生物学家的晚上苦工的方法。

While most PhD students, at some point, go through a period of experimental tedium and dejection, few emerge from that experience with an automated solution. But now Steel has solved it, four years after hatching an idea. The new device was published in PLoS Biology, an open-access journal, last week.

尽管大多数博士生在某个时候经历了一段沉闷的实验和沮丧，但很少有人会从使用自动解决方案的经验中脱颖而出。 但是，在构思出一个想法四年之后，如今，钢铁已经解决了。 上周，该新设备发表在开放获取期刊PLoS Biology上。

Chi.Bio began as a cure for monotony — a simple device to grow cells — but soon expanded in functionality. Whenever Steel had to perform a new type of experiment, he figured out a way to automate it with some DIY know-how. The result is an intricate piece of equipment made from about $300 worth of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and off-the-shelf parts, that can grow cells, dilute them, probe them, control them, and measure them — all remotely.

Chi.Bio起初是一种治疗单调的方法，这是一种简单的细胞生长装置，但很快就扩展了功能。 每当Steel必须执行一种新型实验时，他就想出了一种利用DIY专有技术使其自动化的方法。 结果是由价值约300美元的印刷电路板(PCB)和现成的零件制成的错综复杂的设备，可以生长细胞，稀释细胞，对其进行探测，对其进行控制并进行远程测量。

Chi.Bio only has three components: a control computer, peristaltic pumps for liquid handling, and bioreactors. But those components are loaded with functionality.

C hi.Bio仅包含三个组件：控制计算机，用于液体处理的蠕动泵和生物React器。 但是这些组件都具有功能。

“The device has a really cheap chip spectrometer, which was only released a couple of years ago,” said Steel. “Also, a whole array of different LEDs in a single LED chip is built into the device, so you can output and carefully control the complete visual spectrum of light, which is very important for measuring fluorescent proteins, or for growing certain photosynthetic cells. Over time, I added heat plates, stirring, temperature sensors, and all this pumping hardware.”

“该设备具有非常便宜的芯片光谱仪，该光谱仪是在几年前发布的，” Steel说。 “此外，该设备内置一个LED芯片中的不同LED的整个阵列，因此您可以输出并仔细控制完整的可见光谱，这对于测量荧光蛋白或生长某些光合细胞非常重要。 随着时间的推移，我增加了加热板，搅拌，温度传感器以及所有这些泵送硬件。”

The device that emerged after years of tinkering, with lots of “soldered parts”, was uniquely enabled by Steel’s background. “I had some hardware experience,” he said, “because before I came to Oxford, I worked in quantum computing research and did some electrical engineering.”

经过多年修补后出现的该设备带有许多“焊接的零件”，是由Steel的背景独特地启用的。 他说：“我有一些硬件经验，因为在来牛津大学之前，我从事量子计算研究，并从事过一些电气工程。”

Towards the end of our discussion, I asked Steel why, in his opinion, the Chi.Bio is useful to scientists when so many similar devices already exist. I was thinking mainly about the eVOLVER system, published a couple of years ago in Nature Biotechnology, but there are also “biohackers” that build DIY hardware, in kitchens and garages, for similar purposes.

在我们讨论的最后，我问斯蒂尔，当已经存在如此多的类似设备时，为什么他认为Chi.Bio对科学家有用呢？ 我主要考虑的是几年前在《 自然生物技术 》杂志上发表的eVOLVER系统 ，但也有一些“ 生物黑客”出于类似目的在厨房和车库中构建DIY硬件。

Steel’s response was assured.

钢铁的React得到了保证。

“eVOLVER is designed to be a very parallelized platform, and so you get the ability to grow many things at once and mix between them. This makes it ideal for things like high-dimensional evolutionary studies, and the platform has certainly been groundbreaking in that area,” said Steel.

“ eVOLVER被设计为高度并行化的平台，因此您可以一次增长很多东西并在它们之间进行混合。 这使得它非常适合进行高维进化研究之类的平台，并且该平台在该领域无疑是开创性的。”

“However, you don’t have the same level of control as our device; you can’t measure all these fluorescent proteins and you can’t do optogenetics, and you’re limited to the number of pumps and inputs that are going to each reactor. We tried to make a very adaptable system, which can be used in many different applications. We tried to make it very cheap. And we tried to make it scalable as well.” And it’s still open-access.

“但是，您没有与我们的设备相同的控制级别； 您无法测量所有这些荧光蛋白，也无法进行光遗传学，而且限于进入每个React器的泵和输入的数量。 我们试图制作一个非常适应性强的系统，可以在许多不同的应用程序中使用。 我们试图使其非常便宜。 我们也试图使其具有可扩展性。” 而且它仍然是开放式的。

Steel thinks that his platform is perfect for biotech startups, especially — researchers that cannot afford $100,000 worth of equipment but want to automate their experiments. It could also prove a boon to the DIY-Bio enthusiasts that are flocking to maker spaces and community labs, searching for ways to democratize insulin, create “real vegan cheese”, or produce glow-in-the-dark plants.

斯蒂尔认为，他的平台非常适合生物技术初创公司，尤其是那些负担不起价值100,000美元的设备但希望自动化实验的研究人员。 这对于那些蜂拥到制造商空间和社区实验室，寻找使胰岛素民主化 ，制造“纯素食奶酪”或生产暗淡发光植物的DIY-Bio爱好者来说，也是一个福音。

For a few hundred dollars, you could build a Chi.Bio yourself with the online instruction manual. Or you can skip the soldering and buy one from LabMaker for just under a thousand dollars.

您只需花几百美元，就可以使用在线说明手册自己构建Chi.Bio。 或者，您也可以跳过焊接，而以不到一千美元的价格从LabMaker购买。

Until I find the time and money to automate my own experiments, I will be here, in the laboratory, with the long shadows of Mount Wilson. There are always more experiments to run. So I pick up my pipette, move tip to liquid, liquid to cells, tip to trash. Repeat ad infinitum.

直到我找到时间和金钱来自动化自己的实验之前，我都会在实验室里怀抱威尔逊山的长长阴影。 总会有更多实验要运行。 因此，我拿起移液器，将吸头移至液体，将液体移至细胞，将吸头移至垃圾。 无限次重复广告 。

The other authors on the PLoS Biology paper are Robert Habgood, Ciarán Kelly and Antonis Papachristodoulou.

PLoS生物学论文的其他作者是Robert Habgood，CiaránKelly和Antonis Papachristodoulou。

Reference: Steel H, Habgood R, Kelly C and Papachristodoulou A. “In situ characterisation and manipulation of biological systems with Chi.Bio” PLoS Biology (2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000794

参考： Steel H，Habgood R，Kelly C和PapachristodoulouA。“利用Chi.Bio进行生物系统的原位表征和操作”，《 公共科学图书馆·生物学》 (2020年)。 DOI： https ： //doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000794