In Benchling Bioprocess, Recipes are a collection of Unit Operations in a specific order that encompass the overall procedure for making or purifying a material (such as a program protocol or process).
In this section, we discuss how to configure a Recipe.
How to Configure Recipes
Recipes are configured within Template Collections. Access the Template Collection menu by selecting your avatar icon (in the bottom left of the Benchling platform), hovering over Feature Settings, and selecting Template Collections.
Note: you must have at least Write access to the Template Collection to be able to create new Recipes and edit existing Recipes.
Once you are in the Template Collection menu, you’ll be able to create or edit your Recipes.
Click through the process below to learn more about creating a Recipe.
Step 1: Create the Recipe
After creating a new Template Collection or entering an existing collection, click the Create button in the upper right corner and select the Recipe option from the dropdown.
Step 2: Name the Recipe
After choosing Recipe from the dropdown, a modal will open. In the modal, enter a name for the Recipe into the textbox. We recommend naming your Recipe with a version number so you can keep track of which Studies used which Recipe versions.
Use the Template Collection dropdown if you’d like to change the Template Collection that the Recipe will be part of.
When finished, click the Create button and you will be brought to the recipe designer screen.
Note: You can also duplicate existing Recipes. If there is an existing Recipe that is close to the final design that you need, it will be faster to duplicate and tweak a Recipe than to start from scratch.
Step 3: Configure Unit Operations
Once you’ve created a Recipe, and entered the Recipe designer, you must create one or more Unit Operations to be able to execute your Recipe. You can also optionally configure Definitions and Steps for each Unit Operation to provide operators with the information they need.
Read more about how to configure Unit Operations here.
Once you’ve configured your Unit Operations, you are able to create a Study to execute your Recipe.
FAQs
Can we “branch” a Recipe?
Recipes in Bioprocess are defined as a linear and sequential set of Unit Operations, so they do not ‘branch’. If there are multiple variations or branches that a process can take, we recommend configuring each variation as it’s own linear Recipe.
It is possible to route the material outputs from one Unit Operation to the material inputs of multiple other Unit Operations. So in that sense, the ‘material’ flow across a process can ‘branch’.
When you create an experiment/study from a Recipe, this will effectively create a series of Unit Operation tasks that ‘branch’ for each Condition and Replicate, in the sense that they can all be conducted in parallel.