Kundert Kale
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA, 02138, USA.
BMC Res Notes. 2021 May 1;14(1):164. doi: 10.1186/s13104-021-05573-0.
Microplates are ubiquitous in biological research because they make it easy to collect data for hundreds of different conditions in a single experiment. Despite this, there is no standard method to annotate the wealth of data contained in each plate.
We introduce a new file format, called wellmap, for describing the layout of wells on microplates. The format is text-based and emphasizes being easy to read, write, and share. It is capable of describing any layout for any experiment. It is also accompanied by a tool for generating clear visualizations of layout files, and a simple API for parsing layout files in analysis scripts written in python or R. We have used wellmap in our own research to annotate data from a wide variety of experiments, including qPCR and flow cytometry. Given the large number of experiments that make use of microplates, it is our hope that other researchers will find this file format as useful as we have. For complete instructions on how to install and use wellmap, visit: https://wellmap.rtfd.io .
微孔板在生物学研究中无处不在，因为它们能让研究者在单个实验中轻松收集数百种不同条件下的数据。尽管如此，目前尚无标准方法来注释每个微孔板中包含的大量数据。
我们引入了一种名为wellmap的新文件格式，用于描述微孔板上孔的布局。该格式基于文本，强调易于阅读、编写和共享。它能够描述任何实验的任何布局。它还附带了一个用于生成布局文件清晰可视化效果的工具，以及一个简单的应用程序编程接口（API），用于在使用Python或R编写的分析脚本中解析布局文件。我们已在自己的研究中使用wellmap注释来自各种实验的数据，包括定量聚合酶链反应（qPCR）和流式细胞术。鉴于使用微孔板的实验数量众多，我们希望其他研究人员会发现这种文件格式与我们发现的一样有用。有关如何安装和使用wellmap的完整说明，请访问：https://wellmap.rtfd.io 。
