The BioArt competition to celebrate the launch of PhenoBooth+ sparked creative microbiologists around the world.
Thank you to all of the labs that entered their BioArt.
Singer Instruments are pleased to announce the shortlist as follows:
- Horse and Cat by Erik Rodriguez, The George Washington University
- Microbes in Paris and Ada Lovelace by Rhizome Association
- ContiCollection by Hans-Peter Schmitz, University of Osnabrück
- Research in Microbiology: From Earth to the Great Unknown by Jean-Philippe Côté, The University of Sherbrooke
- FluoroPac and Pacmembert by Amritpal Singh, Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology
- E.coli-Rangoli by Balaram Khamari, Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning
- Sunset at Cold Spring Harbor by Elena Ivanova, Institute of Molecular Biology, Mainz
- Pinky the gorgi by Kaveh Emami, Newcastle University
- Having fun with the Stinger and fluorescent yeasts by Matthias Meurer, Center for Molecular Biology at Heidelberg University
- Fractal by Marcus Walker, Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology
The Judges
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”4″ gal_title=”PB+ judging panel”]- Harry Singer – Singer Instruments’ Managing Director and Physicist, did art at school for a bit
- Leo Davey – An award-winning, professional artist, keen to explore BioArt
- Grant Brown – Molecular Biologist, Professor at University of Toronto, enjoys teaching BioArt at Summer schools
- Ben Pollard – Software Manager, with no discernible talent for art, programmed the PhenoBooth+
- Jose Aguiar-Cervera – PhD student and PhenoBooth+ user who loves yeast
- Leah Ashley – Synthetic Biologist and Singer Instruments’ Asia-Pacific Manager, has a GCSE in art – don’t ask for her grade
The judging has now been held, stay tuned to see who the lucky winner is!
Which is your favourite plate?
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Some of the entries received
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WIN A PhenoBooth+
Are you feeling creative? Enter an image of your most interesting plate for a chance to win a new PhenoBooth+, which includes a much higher resolution camera than the previous PhenoBooth, and now comes with a full five lighting channel setup.
You can create your BioArt whichever way you want, there are no limitations!
Maybe you’ve got a contaminated plate that is mesmerising – show it off to the world by entering it into the BioArt competition.
Perhaps your students have made BioArt by hand in the lab? Multiple submissions from your lab are allowed so you can get everyone involved!
Or have you made your BioArt using a robot? Let us know in the form below!
Entries must be submitted by the 7th of May so submit your entry before it’s too late!
If you see your BioArt in the frame above when the countdown comes to an end, you will be the lucky winner of a PhenoBooth+! Officially ending manual colony counting in your lab.
How to enter
To *enter the competition please submit your BioArt entry by email to this address [email protected], fill in the form below and attach your file or simply submit your artwork via one of our social media platforms using the hashtag #SingerBioArt.
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*Terms and Conditions
Entries should be submitted using the form above, through one of our social media channels using the hashtag #SingerBioArt or emailed to [email protected] and include the following details: your name, contact email address, your place of work, a name for your BioArt, and the organisms used.
The competition will close on the 7th of May at 10 pm (BST).
The winner will be selected by an esteemed BioArt judging panel who are looking for the most creative plate.
By entering this competition you agree that if you win, you are happy for your name and lab name to be used and you will provide Singer Instruments with a short write-up or interview for marketing purposes. The winner will be announced on Singer Instruments’ website and marketing channels and will be notified using the submission method provided.
By entering your images into the competition, you grant permission to Singer Instruments to use, reproduce and publicly display the image. Those who enter must have the copyright for all images entered. Singer Instruments may request higher resolution images as a condition of delivery.
The International Day of Women and Girls in Science is a stark reminder for us all how underrepresented women are in STEM-related fields.
Less than 30% of researchers worldwide are female according to UNESCO Institute for Statistics data.
Female enrollment globally onto STEM higher education courses is extremely low as only 35% of higher education STEM students are female.
Young girls are discouraged from studying a STEM discipline due to gender bias and gender stereotypes (1), which is one of the reasons why this international day is so important. We must empower girls through awareness and education to encourage more to pursue STEM careers.
Here is a list of incredible female scientists who became pioneers within their fields and shaped our world.
Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)
When Franklin was just 15 years old she already knew she wanted to pursue a career in science. She was living her childhood dream when following her PhD she was offered the chance to be a research associate at King’s College London.
At King’s she worked on X-ray diffraction images of DNA which facilitated the discovery of the DNA helix by Watson And Crick. Photo 51 (see image) became vital evidence that revealed the DNA double helix structure. Unfortunately, Franklin died from ovarian cancer 4 years before Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for discovering the DNA double helix structure.
Despite the use of her X-ray crystallography observations to solve the chemical organisation of DNA the Nobel committee did not make posthumous nominations at the time.
However, Watson has himself suggested in an interview that to honour her contribution it would’ve been a good idea for Franklin and Wilkins to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Jennifer Anne Doudna (1964-Present) and Emmanuelle Charpentier (1968-Present)
Doudna and Charpentier are leading figures in the CRISPR Revolution for their work that was fundamental in developing CRISPR-mediated genome editing. In 2012 they proposed that enzymes from bacteria that control microbial immunity, known as CRISPR-Cas9, could be utilised for programmable editing of genomes. In 2020 they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the CRISPR-Cas9 method of genome editing.
Cynthia Kenyon (1954-Present)
In her early life, Kenyon worked on a farm before realising she wanted to study science to become a vet. She is now a pioneer in ageing research from her studies on the roundworm (Caenorhabditis elegans) which has demonstrated that genetic manipulation can change the process of ageing.
In 1993 Kenyon discovered that a single-gene mutation (DAF-2) doubles the lifespan of C. elegans and a second mutation in the gene for the transcription factor DAF-16 reverses this effect.
After 3 decades of research Kenyon’s final efforts are now focused on finding small molecules to allow disease-resistant youthful ageing in humans.
Janaki Ammal (1897-1984)
While growing up she watched as her sisters wed through arranged marriages. However, she followed her own intuition by embarking on a life of scholarship which began when she obtained a Bachelor’s degree at Queen Mary’s College (University of Madras) and was later awarded an honours degree in Botany. During this time women internationally were discouraged from higher education proving how fierce she was! In 1931 she became the first Indian woman to receive a doctorate degree in botany in the US.
As an expert in cytogenetics Ammal helped the Imperial Sugar Cane Institute in Coimbatore allowing them to develop and sustain their own varieties of sweet sugarcane. Her research helped determine which varieties of native plants to cross-breed with Saccharum to find a crop that was best suited for India’s tropical environments.
To honour her research in plant breeding, a variety of Magnolia was named after her: Magnolia Kobus Janaki Ammal.
Flossie Wong-Staal (1946-2020)
Flossie Wong-Staal was part of a team that first identified HIV was the cause of AIDS.
She became the first researcher in 1985 to clone HIV allowing scientists to understand how the virus evades the immune system. She finalised genetic mapping of the virus making it possible to develop testing for HIV. Her research contributed to the development of the blood tests we use to detect HIV.
Wong-Staal was quoted to say: “It adds to the joy of discovery to know that your work may make a difference in people’s lives”.
Towards the end of her brilliant career, she focused her effort on better understanding hepatitis C by working as the Chief Scientific Officer at Immusol, a biotechnology company, developing drugs to combat the disease.
She will be remembered as a ground-breaking researcher. Her methods are still practiced today to understand diseases such as Covid-19.
Hadiyah-Nicole Green
Hadiyah-Nicole Green had no aspirations as a child to become a scientist but now she is a multi-disciplinary physicist who specialises in targeted cancer therapeutics.
She admitted in an interview to The Scientist that she didn’t have a scientist as a role model in her life growing up, but she loved learning.
She earned her doctoral degree in physics at the University of Alabama becoming the second black woman and fourth black person to do so.
Her interest in developing a new cancer treatment became apparent after her aunt chose not to undergo chemotherapy after being diagnosed with female reproductive cancer and by watching her uncle, who developed oesophageal cancer, experience the unwanted side effects of chemotherapy.
Her aim, using her background in lasers, was to develop a treatment that targeted cancerous cells without damaging healthy ones.
She said during an interview “If we can see from a satellite in outer space if a dime on the ground is face up or face down, we should be able to do a better job of pinpointing the tumour and treating just the tumour and not the whole person.”
Her goal is to demonstrate the efficacy of the laser-activated nanoparticle treatment, which induces tumour regression by ~100%, in a variety of malignant tumour models.
This article gives a brief overview of the ground-breaking research these women have undertaken and the discoveries they have made which have shaped our world. If you enjoyed reading this article and would like to read more subscribe to our mailing list!
Singer instruments are delighted to announce we’ve won our first Tech South West Award! After attending the event virtually the team didn’t realise they had won an award until the next day. Congratulations to the team and thank you to the Tech South West team for hosting this event.
Each year Tech South West hosts an awards ceremony celebrating the success of the tech industry in the region. This year the event had to be held virtually due to Covid-19 restrictions however, still over 200 attendees gathered to celebrate what they’ve achieved this year. Singer Instruments were thrilled to be shortlisted alongside the best tech companies in the region for the second year in a row, yet had no expectations of winning an award. But we did just that!
Harry Singer our managing director explained “Six of us attended the ceremony. We watched everything. But none of us realised we’d won anything! I think we might have all been distracted by the banter in the social feed! The awards ceremony itself was so snappy and up-beat, blinking put you at risk of missing something. In fact, we didn’t even realise we’d won an award until the next day.”
“Massive thanks as ever to the Tech South West team. They’re doing a great job at connecting, celebrating and showcasing tech companies and growing the talent pool in our region. And it looks like they’ve got even more awesomeness in the pipeline for next year.”
Singer Instruments are proud to announce we’ve won our first Tech South West Award! We are really honoured by this recognition for our innovative programmes, our fantastic company growth and our tech success in the South West.
Congratulations to the entire Singer team for making this possible!
Advanced robotics meets Synthetic Biology: Evolution of Singer-PIXL, an Automated next-generation Colony Picker “Singer-PIXL went from design to automation within 2 years of collaboration with SynCTI-BioFoundry Singapore and it has found wide acceptance in the synthetic biology community for its high precision and efficiency”
Synthetic biology is the marriage between science and engineering to design and build biological parts and cutting-edge devices to help fuel bio-based economies. This motivation to accelerate innovation in synthetic biology between academia and industry resulted in the establishment of the Singapore Consortium for Synthetic Biology (SINERGY), hosted by the National University of Singapore (NUS). SINERGY helps to bring industry sectors on board and create a globally connected bio-based economy in Singapore. SINERGY is headed by a highly reputed leader in synthetic biology Professor Matthew Chang from the Department of Biochemistry at NUS, who is also the director of the NUS Synthetic Biology for Clinical and Translational Innovation (SynCTI) and WIL@NUS Corporate Laboratory.
A success story that emerged from SINERGY is the collaboration between Singer Instruments, which is a UK-based technology leader in automation and robotic instruments for the life science industry, and the BioFoundry Singapore (hosted by SynCTI, BioFoundry is Singapore’s first and only biofoundry) which houses state-of-the-art robotic systems. The mantra of BioFoundry is based on the concept of Design-Build-Test-Learn to evolve synthetic biological systems on a highly efficient, automated manufacturing platform to enhance high-throughput analysis. This led Singer Instruments and NUS-SynCTI to sign a research collaboration agreement in 2017 to conceive and develop a new advanced and automated high-throughput colony picker.
The amalgamation of industry and academic partners, where Singer Instruments used the motto “Listen, Collaborate and Integrate” with the Synthetic Biology’s concept of “Design-Build-Test-Learn”, led to their next-generation colony picker called Singer-PIXL. Singer’s scientists and engineers worked closely with SynCTI researchers to design and test Singer-PIXL, which evolved to become a high-precision colony picker. This agreement also meant housing Singer-PIXL at the BioFoundry Singapore for proximity to researchers, who could use the instruments and provide constant feedback to design and learning.
Screening of large libraries of microbial strains is a common workflow in synthetic biology. While screening is traditionally performed manually, handpicking thousands of colonies is not only impractical and tedious but also inefficient and costly. Despite the huge advantages of robotic colony picking systems, these platforms have not been widely adopted largely due to issues such as inconsistency, low throughput, and cross-contamination.
Singer-PIXL thus evolved by working through these shortcomings of current colony pickers available in the market. Singer-PIXL excels on 3 major aspects of design and automation.
a) User-friendly software interface: Singer-PIXL uses a touch-screen interface to guide users through the workflow to set up protocols for picking the right colonies in minutes. It is also incredibly simple to operate for end users, typically allowing them to master 90%
of software functionality within 10 mins of introduction. In short, hassle-free and easy.
Use of Pinpoint picking technology: This is a meticulously developed technology for reliability and sterility. Compared to existing models of colony pickers that use metal pins that must be sterilized every time and run the risk of cross-contamination, Singer-PIXL uses polymer-based PickupLine that is freshly cut to generate sterile ends as pinheads to transfer microbial colonies. After the colony picking is completed, the “tip” is snipped off and disposed of, hence preventing cross-contamination. Another advantage of the Pinpoint technology is that it can cope with any variation in agar height automatically to ensure that every single colony on the plate is picked and transferred without damaging agar plates. The motors are accurate to 50 microns and the picking profiles are adjustable to optimise for even the most tenacious colonies.
Singer-PIXL went from design to automation within 2 years of collaboration with SynCTI-BioFoundry Singapore. All the above-stated improvements in design and automation are based on the inputs and feedback from researchers at SynCTI. With this new design and capabilities, it has found wide acceptance in the synthetic biology community for its high precision and efficiency, thus expanding its market globally. From a researcher’s point of view, they were instrumental in the development of this new fully automated colony picker through constant learning-feedback which led to improvements in the prototype, and in return, benefited from having huge libraries of strains screened at low cost and less time.
Conclusion
This collaboration between SynCTI-Singer PIXL has proved to be a good model and provides a blueprint for the development of future advanced robotics. We proudly believe At SynCTI that through initiatives like SINERGY, nurturing corporate-academic partnerships enhances the crosstalk between researchers and engineers, resulting in the development of cutting-edge technologies for automation and robotic screening platforms. Within SINERGY, a bevy of synergistic public-private partnerships between academia and industry is currently in the works, and we look forward to the sharing of other success stories in the very near future.
We are overjoyed to be announced as ‘Employer of the Year’ at the Somerset Business Awards. At Singer Instruments we develop world-class robots for biotechnology. Our products accelerate science in laboratories in over 50 countries, for customers like NASA, Cancer Research UK, and the top 50 universities in the World.
The Employer of the Year award is recognition of 4 years of hard work, specifically aimed at improving staff inclusivity, satisfaction, and retention:
‘Profit Share for Nerds’ is a Company bonus scheme, launched in 2016. 50% of profits above target are divided among all employees. This year, our staff are due to receive bonuses at 13% of their annual salary.
We launched ‘Equity for Nerds’ in 2018. As a recognised Government SIP scheme, this optional employee share options scheme gives employees a tax-efficient way to receive bonuses and make an investment that is currently growing at about 25%. Year one saw a 50% adoption rate, and half of Singer Instruments employees are now business owners!
Other notable initiatives include a program to increase salaries towards being nationally competitive; a transparent pay banding structure for fairness and to augment understanding of career progression; a program to increase holiday allowance by an extra day per year for the next 5 years.
Since the implementation of these initiatives, we have noted a marked improvement in staff retention from 75% to 91%.
We now perform above Health & Safety Executive (HSE) targets in all categories: Demands; Control; Managers’ Support, Peer Support, Relationships, Role, and Change. The HSE has recently showcased Singer as a case study in recognising and dealing with the prevention of workplace stress and related issues.
Our MD Harry Singer, 3rd Generation family-owner of Singer Instruments says: “Recruiting high-quality engineers, software developers, and biologists is difficult, especially when you’re based in a tiny little village like Roadwater. Over the years we’ve had to work extra hard to make Singer Instruments attractive enough to lure engineers from the likes of Red Bull Racing and managers away from BMW and Facebook. It’s really nice to get recognised as a great place to work, thanks very much to the Chamber of Commerce and Somerset Business Awards!”
At Singer, we believe in a healthy work-life balance, with staff encouraged to limit working hours from 9 to 5. The atmosphere is relaxed, attitudes are positive, and nobody wears a suit. We firmly believe that a strong focus on transparency, clear growth pathways, an inclusive strategy, and a shared rewards structure makes for a dynamic, buzzing atmosphere with engaged, happy teams who really look forward to coming into work on a Monday morning. Most of the time!
Fancy working at Singer Instruments?
If Singer seems like the right place for you or you are a keen intern looking for some experience, then please get in touch. We are always on the lookout for top talent.
Click here to see what positions are currently available.