Kennedy McDaniel Bae | BioOptimist

Automating cell culture isn't about making science easier - it's about making it better. By acknowledging rather than denying natural selection in our labs, we're opening new frontiers in biological research.

As labs modernize and bring in automation, there's an opportunity to do better. We need to rethink cell culture from the ground up, just like the alarm clock reinvented wake-up calls. Enter: self-driving cell culture systems.

This problem has been known for over 50 years, yet most labs still avoid regular cell verification. Some argue time and cost, but fundamentally it's a workflow problem.

In part because of the mechanisms of selection at play, 5-46% of cell lines in research labs are misidentified. Even samples from originating labs are wrong 18% of the time. We're often not working with what we think we are.

Biologists face a paradox: they want to minimize variability to more easily analyze their results, BUT they are studying systems that evolved to have high variability as an evolutionary survival strategy.

So point 1 - natural selection and survival of the fittest takes place EVERYWHERE, including experimental labs.

Take HeLa cells as an example. Did you know these immortal cells are so good at surviving that they literally invade other cell lines? One study found that 67% of misidentified cells had been overtaken by HeLa cells.

High school bio told you about the peppered moth and it's changes due to pollution during the industrial revolution. Lab specimens are doing the same thing under our noses, but the consequences for research are far more complicated.

Natural selection doesn't just happen in nature - it's actively shaping laboratory experiments (and sometimes undermines them)