From Data Factory to Better Drugs: Part 2 - Manipulating Cells at the Genetic Level

“This is the part that turns this from just a cell factory into a data factory. This high-dimensional data is the raw material our foundation models learn from. And because it’s this rich, the data is reusable, mined again and again across programs rather than generated once and thrown away.” Growing disease-relevant cells at scale is only the beginning. In Part 2 of our series on our end-to-end platform, VP of Neuroscience Chris Winrow breaks down how we run genome-scale perturbations and quantify the resulting changes in cellular state. 🔬Using acoustic liquid handlers, we move 2.5-nanoliter droplets of CRISPR-Cas9 reagents into 1536-well plates, up to 2 million times a week. Crucially, we intentionally randomize these experiments so our machine learning models learn true biology rather than experimental artifacts. By imaging and sequencing these exact cells, we capture thousands of measurements from a single experiment. This creates a rich, reusable dataset that feeds our AI foundation models today and stays future-proofed for tomorrow. 🚀 Follow along over the coming weeks as we continue this series, covering how Recursion maps biology, optimizes precision drug design, and closes the gap between patient and discovery. #TechBio #AI #drugdiscovery #drugdesign #biology #AIdrugdiscovery