Contents of this Article
Abstract and Physical entities on TeselaGen
The core concept of the Materials and Inventory Management Toolkit is the difference between abstract and physical entities. An abstract entity is an entry that does not necessarily exist in your lab, while a physical entity is present in it; although they are different, both can have the same information. For example, a DNA sequence or DNA Part is a theoretical piece of information, but once you synthesize it, you can register it as a DNA Material, then you will have several entries with the same nucleotide sequence, but representing abstract or physical entities. In this way, TeselaGen uses a hierarchy to classify your entries.
Next, let’s briefly explain each type of entry available on your Materials and Inventory Management Toolkit, its uses, and specific information on each.
Material Registry
Materials link theoretical molecules and strains to physical inventory. They are connected with abstract entities that can no longer be edited.
DNA Materials: The information displayed includes the sequence map, material lineage, and linked protein-coding sequences.
RNA Materials: Similar to DNA Materials, you can open the sequence on the Open Vector Editor and add information like Features and Annotations.
Protein Materials: They are linked to Amino Acid Sequences from the Registry Toolkit, and you can indicate relevant DNA materials.
Genomic Materials: These materials must be linked to an already existing genome.
Microbial Materials: These materials represent microorganisms; they are linked to a genome and contain information on the selection methods, plasmids, and reactions, and can be promoted to strains.
Cell Cultures: They represent a cell culture that contains a cell line, and relevant plasmids.
Reagents: Reagents can be used in reactions. These are the only materials that include no samples or aliquots; when creating them, you can select from several reagent types.
Inventory Management
TeselaGen's Lab Inventory Management System (LIMS) helps you manage your automated lab by keeping careful track of essential materials. While the Material Registry shows you the relevant biological information of your physical entities, the Inventory Management allows you to track their locations, uses, and other information not necessarily relevant to biological aspects.
Samples and Aliquots
Samples are physical (“real”) materials you have stored on different containers (i.e., plates and tubes), inside a location (i.e., shelf, freezer, etc.) in your lab facilities. Samples can contain the different materials explained above, and you can create aliquots from them.
As you can see in the image above, when you open a sample or aliquot you will see a representation of the plate or tube where it's placed. Next, let's see how plates and tubes are managed.
Plates and Tubes
Plates and tubes are located on a typical library view, and they contain samples and aliquots. As seen on the images above and below, when opening them you will see a diagram of how the samples are distributed and/or composed inside of them.
Additives are only visible on tubes; they represent reagents that are added to a reaction well or sample aliquot as part of a workflow. It does not have quite the same status as an aliquot since we are not so worried about tracking (it does not contain genetic information for example). We may want to keep track of its depletion as a matter of course though, so we are warned before we run out and can replenish our supply.
Barcodes
Barcodes can be used to register and access inventory items across the platform. It can be accessed on the top-right section of the main menu next to the notifications icon. You can use a barcode scanner attached to your device to scan a barcoded item and enter it into your repository in the TeselaGen platform. A barcode can be manually typed to open the corresponding item record previously registered in TeselaGen’s platform.