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Tool: I built a browser-based toolkit for common bioinformatics and molecular biology tasks - looking for feedback

I've been building BiotechABC, a browser-based collection of small tools for common bioinformatics and molecular biology tasks:

https://biotechabc.com

The idea came from noticing that many relatively simple tasks often require switching between different websites or desktop tools.

The current tools cover areas such as:

  • DNA/RNA sequence analysis
  • Reverse complement and sequence transformations
  • Translation and ORF analysis
  • FASTA processing
  • Protein analysis
  • Primer and PCR calculations
  • Molecular biology calculators

One of the main design goals is local-first processing. Where an operation can be performed reliably in the browser, the sequence/data is processed locally rather than uploaded to a server. There is also no account requirement.

I'm intentionally starting with simple, focused utilities rather than trying to build another large bioinformatics platform.

I'm interested in feedback from people who actually work with biological data:

What small bioinformatics task do you find yourself doing repeatedly that still feels unnecessarily inconvenient?

Also, if you try any of the existing tools, I'd be interested in hearing about:

incorrect or unexpected results missing options workflows that could be made easier tools you would actually use regularly

The goal at this stage is to figure out which problems are genuinely worth building next, rather than simply adding more tools.

molecular-biology bioinformatics software sequence-analysis web-tools
• 47 views • link
updated by Michael Dondrup Michael Dondrup • written by Ravi • Ravi

I am a bit puzzled about the recent torrent of "runs in the browser", "need feedback" posts appearing. Is this a marketing strategy? Do you really want feedback? The interface looks neat at first glance (e.g. the sequence viewer component), it's obviously vibe-coded, but if it works, fine, and I'm doing that too. With this tool, I don't get the source code (other tools had linked to the GitHub repos), it's free but on a .com domain but runs in my browser. What's the business model, and what about sustainability? What about unique features and what is new compared to competitors like UGENE, SnapGene, Geneious, and CLC? Lab biologists may find some of these functions useful; however, some parts appear strangely unfinished, like the primer tool, where I couldn't find how to set parameters, or the k-mer spectrum tool, which doesn't actually plot the spectrum distribution (like in Genoscope) (there's a placeholder where the plot should be), and it limits k-mer length to 12bp- why? The codon table supports only 3 different codes...

The interface is slightly cluttered, with documentation at the bottom of the page making it too text-heavy. The prebuilt plasmids are nice, but it would be good to provide a library of commercial vectors. I am missing built-in sequence alignment and multiple-sequence alignment tools, as well as the ability to import data by GenBank accession numbers. Some of the primer- and restriction-site-related tools may be useful for bench scientists.

I am wondering what model/agent the interface has been built with (I am guessing GPT Codex).

• 0 views • link
written by Michael Dondrup Michael Dondrup

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