BioDevelopers are self taught, love laptops, Twitter, ML, Benchling and continue to stick to Excel.

What is the main focus in your current role? Select all that apply

A large proportion of wet lab scientists (87%!) indicate that they write code. Respondents have been coding for an average of 6.8 years not including education (median 3.5 years) and an average of 8.9 years including education and personal coding (median 5.5 years).

When it comes to coding, 74% of them learned the ropes by "just doing it", followed by school or formal education (63%), online resources such as videos and blogs (45%) and books/physical media (29%). This finding is fascinating, because our respondents are working on super complex problems. We can only assume that means they locked themselves in a lab and emerged months later with a newfound talent for Python and R.

And speaking of languages, the top picks for BioDevelopers are Python, R, Shell, and SQL. They love these languages so much that they plan to keep working with them for the next 12 months.

How did you learn to code?

Machine learning (ML) is popular among biodevelopers: 73% of respondents indicate that they use ML in their work. People working in an in silico role are slightly more likely to use ML (80%) versus wet lab scientists, but 68% of wet lab scientists in our survey also indicated that they use ML. Among those who don’t yet use machine learning in their work, 82% say they would be interested in using machine learning in their work.

Do you use machine learning in your work?

Would you be interested in using machine learning in your work?

The case for social media to stay up to date

When it comes to staying up to date in their field, biologists are turning to some unexpected sources. The top spot for keeping up with the latest news and research is Twitter. A whopping 74% said they turn to Twitter to stay up to date in their field. Following close behind is Biorxiv, at 60%. The more traditional journals and conferences also remain popular sources of information, with 55% and 51% of respondents respectively saying they use these to stay up to date. Respondents also use Google Scholar (50%), LinkedIn (49%) and Bits in Bio (43%) to stay up to date.

It's interesting to see how social media has become a valuable tool for professionals in the life sciences. By following experts in their field, biologists can quickly get access to breaking news and cutting-edge research.

What sources do you use to keep up to date in your field?

AWS, Benchling, Matplotlib, Excel and your laptop are all you need!

Most of the participants (79%) used Amazon Web Services (AWS) as their preferred cloud platform, followed by Google Cloud (45%) and Microsoft Azure (15%). The most popular file formats used by the respondents were CSV/TSV, JSON, FASTA, FASTQ, and BAM/SAM. Interestingly, despite the availability of various data visualization tools, Excel remained a favorite among the participants with 37% of respondents using it. However, Matplotlib was the most commonly used tool (63%), followed by Plotly (45%).

Benchling, (36%) is by far the most popular LIMS/ELN, followed by BaseSpace, and LabVantage. Other GUI life science tools that people like are IGV, Geneious, and Pymol.

As for lab equipment, some unexpected answers emerged. The number one favorite piece of equipment? Their computers, of course! We guess BioDevelopers are just like the rest of us: hopelessly addicted to their screens. But there were some more lab favorites, too, like DNA sequencers, microscopes, and mass spec analysis machines.

At Cradle, we were specifically interested in protein engineering. Turns out, 28.6% of our BioDevelopers have worked with proteins. Enzymes, antibodies, short peptides, and gene regulatory proteins were all on the menu. And for those who haven't dabbled in protein engineering yet, 59% said they might in the future. Interestingly, many people who don’t yet work on proteins are interested in working on gene regulatory proteins.

So what's the future of protein engineering? Stability optimization, discovering novel function, and improving binding affinity are all high on the list of design objectives. But don't worry, BioDevelopers, we won't ask you to pick just one. We know you're multi-tasking experts, with 43% running only one or two projects at a time, and 19% running a whole bunch at once.

Has your work involved protein engineering?

Bio Developers and technologists are a diverse group of individuals across many spectrums. We are committed to continuing to ensure our community is inclusive and welcoming to all.

The majority of responses came from the 🇺🇸 US (62%), followed by the 🇬🇧United Kingdom (7%), the 🇳🇱Netherlands (5%), 🇨🇦 Canada (5%), 🇩🇪Germany (4%), 🇨🇭Switzerland (4%), 🇫🇷 France (2%), Australia, Belgium, India, Brazil, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Israel, Portugal, Russia and Slovenia.

The majority of respondents (80%) identifies as man, 13% as woman, 7% prefer not to say/ non-binary. We see a nice age distribution with the majority of respondents born in the late eighties, and nineties.

Was BioDeveloper survey the right name or did it skew towards those working in silico?

Where should we post the survey to get more responses?

What else do you think we should do differently next time?

2022 Bio Developer survey results