ReviewFrontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology2020
Automation in the Life Science Research Laboratory.
Review in Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 61 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
61 citing papers in PubMed.
- The past, present and future of self-driving laboratories.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2026Review
- Artificial intelligence and automation in enzyme engineering: evolution, advances, and future perspectives.Bioresources and bioprocessing · 2026Review
- SmartTrap: automated precision experiments with optical tweezers.Nature methods · 2026Article
- Pathogen to read: a rapid, automated workflow for public health-ready microbial sequencing.BMC genomics · 2026Article
- Peak2Patch: High-Fidelity Functional Group Identification through Attention-Based Fusion of Infrared and Mass Spectra.ACS omega · 2026Article
- Knowledge preservation in the era of big science and AI: strategies for sustainable scientific research.Nature communications · 2026Review
- Automated Generation of Supported Lipid Bilayer Arrays with Controlled Receptor Densities in Well Plates.ACS applied materials & interfaces · 2026Article
- OSCAR: A Modular Open-Source Robotic Platform for Biological Laboratories.ACS synthetic biology · 2026Article
- Automated Laboratory Security Tiers: a framework for evaluating and mitigating biosecurity risks from latent capabilities.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Simple large-scale quantitative phenotyping and antimicrobial susceptibility testing with Q-PHAST.Nature protocols · 2026Review
- Review
- Compliance by code: The need for automated protocols in breath alcohol testing - case reports.Forensic science international. Synergy · 2025Article
- Evolution of the PRNT: Merging tradition and innovation to set the gold standard in the era of automation.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2025Review
- Article
- Innovative Method for Fully Automated, Enzyme-Free Tissue Dissociation and Preparation for Single-Cell Analysis.Cellular and molecular bioengineering · 2025Article
- The evolution of analytical techniques for multiplex analysis of protein biomarkers.Expert review of proteomics · 2025Review
- High-throughput multiplexed serology via the mass-spectrometric analysis of isotopically barcoded beads.Nature biomedical engineering · 2025Article
- A mobile robot bridging manual and automated bioscientific workflows by applying the Swiss army knife principle.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Facilitating laboratory automation using a robot with a simple and inexpensive camera detection system.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Deep video anomaly detection in automated laboratory setting.Expert systems with applications · 2025Article
1 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Protocols in the academic life science laboratory are heavily reliant on the manual manipulation of tools, reagents and instruments by a host of research staff and students. In contrast to industrial and clinical laboratory environments, the usage of automation to augment or replace manual tasks is limited. Causes of this 'automation gap' are unique to academic research, with rigid short-term funding structures, high levels of protocol variability and a benevolent culture of investment in people over equipment. Automation, however, can bestow multiple benefits through improvements in reproducibility, researcher efficiency, clinical translation, and safety. Less immediately obvious are the accompanying limitations, including obsolescence and an inhibitory effect on the freedom to innovate. Growing the range of automation options suitable for research laboratories will require more flexible, modular and cheaper designs. Academic and commercial developers of automation will increasingly need to design with an environmental awareness and an understanding that large high-tech robotic solutions may not be appropriate for laboratories with constrained financial and spatial resources. To fully exploit the potential of laboratory automation, future generations of scientists will require both engineering and biology skills. Automation in the research laboratory is likely to be an increasingly critical component of future research programs and will continue the trend of combining engineering and science expertise together to answer novel research questions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.