Getting Started

To get the most out of CellRepo, we recommend creating an account. Sign up by clicking the ‘Join Now’ button on the CellRepo homepage

You can choose to sign up with your Google or LinkedIn account, otherwise, fill out your details in our registration form

Choose an avatar, fill in your details, add your organisation (optional) - if it's already on CellRepo, it will appear in the suggestions

Check your email inbox for an email from CellRepo to confirm your account. Click the link in the email to confirm your email address with CellRepo. You may need to check your spam folder

Once you are confirmed, you can sign in using your email address and password

Projects are what contain all of your experiment data. Each project represents an experiment on a cell line. You can view all projects available to you on the projects page, and here you can start a new project

Give your project a name, and optionally add a description. Add a README to tell others how to use or read your project. Set the level of control over who gets to view and contribute to your project. You can associate a project with a lab, too

Once your project has been saved, you can begin adding commits. By default, your project has a main branch, which commits will be added to. You can create new branches from different commits to create the structure of your project

Switch branches in your project by clicking on the branch name in the branch dropdown. Note that a commit must be added to a new branch for it to show in the project diagram

You can add strains and plasmids to a project from the Actions menu. Here you will also find options to edit your project, download files, produce a PDF report, share, fork and publish a project

Manage your new project using the Actions menu

Forking a project

Forking a project creates a copy of an existing project (belonging to you or someone else) for you to edit and extend

Publishing a project

Publishing a project makes the project public, creates a DOI and finalises all commits on that project Once published, the project can only be forked or deleted

Labs are a way to work with other users on CellRepo. You can define as many labs as you need, and they can consist of one or as many other users as you like

Click on the Labs link on the menu bar, and you see labs you are a part of. Click on the add lab button to create a new lab

Once you have created your lab, you can enter the name of someone you would like to add to the lab in the text box on the lab page, clicking the add button to add them

Continue this for as many lab members as you would like to add. You can remove lab members on this page, as well as delete the lab

When you delete a lab, any projects associated with that lab become private so that no one apart from the project owner can access them

Barcodes are part of commits and are generated to uniquely identify your commits on CellRepo. Both strain and plasmid commits can have barcodes. Note that, in order to produce a DNA barcode, a whole genome sequence or plasmid sequence/map is required to be uploaded

By default, all commits have digital barcodes assigned to them for search purposes. If you wish to generate a DNA barcode, check the box for the DNA barcode and select the barcode version you require. This is when you are inserting the barcode into the strain or plasmid

If you do not want to physically barcode a commit, untick the 'DNA barcode' box. You will still have a digital ID for that commit

If you have received a barcoded asset and wish to verify the barcode, you can either go directly to the commit that the asset came from, or you can enter your sequenced barcode into the search bar to bring up the related commit. You will see an option on the barcode to verify your sequenced barcode with the original. Clicking this button opens up a dialog where you can check your sequenced barcode and verify it as authentic and/or unmodified

A commit adds the latest changes to the project. It contains information about the changes to the cell line, who did it, references, barcodes, documents etc. Commits are a representation of a cell line at an exact moment in history.

Select 'Add Strain Commit' or 'Add Plasmid Commit' from the Actions menu to add a commit to the project

Fill in the commit form with information about your change. The form will be different depending on whether you have selected 'Strain' or 'Plasmid' commit type. In the Strain type, you can reference an existing CellRepo plasmid with the strain

You can view your commit once you have added and saved all of your data. The action menu will have the option for you to edit, share, publish, or branch from your commit

Click on a document to download that file

A commit, once saved, with remain in its ‘Draft’ state UNTIL you click ‘Finalise Commit’ at which point it can no longer be edited or deleted. This is also what happens to all commits in a project when you publish it

Search within CellRepo for things you or other CellRepo users have created

Partial barcode match

The search functionality does support partial barcode matches when searching for full barcodes. It has tolerance for around 6BP difference between the barcode in the system and the barcode being entered

Enter your term in the search bar on the navigation bar at the top of the page, and click the button to search

Click on a search result to view the resource

You have access to your account settings should you wish to update your name, email address, password, organisation, avatar, notification settings, or delete your account

Click on your avatar in the top right corner of the navbar

Change any fields you wish and click the 'Update' button to save your changes

To delete your account, click the delete button in the bottom right corner - this is a red button with a skull and crossbones icon