Technical Perspective: Programming Microfluidics to Execute Biological Protocols

Reproducibility of experimental results is a cornerstone of biology research. Today, many of these experiments are done using automated machines such as robots and microfluidic chips However, published reports about the work explain the experimentation method in plain English, which must be interpreted by other groups to reproduce the experiment. Biological protocols give a recipe for a biological experiment. Ideally, we would like these protocols to be specified rigorously and precisely. Once we do that, we are a step away from automation, reproducibility, and also repurposing.