Research initiative

About Straintest Bio Initiative

An independent research effort exploring how AI can help scientists navigate large biological datasets.

Who We Are

Straintest Bio Initiative (SBI) is an independent research effort exploring how artificial intelligence can help scientists navigate and extract insight from large biological datasets.

SBI is supported by Straintest, a technology company specialising in computer vision and large-scale data analysis. While Straintest's core work focuses on civil engineering and infrastructure monitoring, many of the underlying methods, geometric reasoning, uncertainty modelling, and data fusion, translate naturally to biological structures. Protplex was created as a research project driven by scientific curiosity.

Why Protplex Exists

Modern structural biology has produced an enormous volume of high-quality data, particularly in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). However, discovering relevant structures often still requires detailed prior knowledge, manual filtering, or specialised tools.

Protplex explores whether AI systems can distil structural, functional, and biochemical information into representations that support intuitive, natural-language discovery.

Our goal is not to replace existing databases, but to make them easier to navigate.

Research Philosophy

We believe public scientific data should remain accessible and useful. If Protplex proves valuable to the community, we are open to:

Academic collaborations
We welcome partnerships with research groups working at the intersection of structural biology, bioinformatics, and machine learning.
Integration with public resources
Connecting Protplex capabilities with existing open databases and infrastructure where it adds genuine value.
Derived datasets for research
Providing embeddings, annotations, and structured outputs that can accelerate downstream research.
Private dataset applications
Applying similar methods to private datasets relevant to drug discovery, protein engineering, or custom pipelines.

About Straintest

Straintest develops advanced monitoring systems for large structures using computer vision and photogrammetry. Originally focused on civil engineering applications, Straintest's work involves:

  • Large-scale data processing
  • Geometric reconstruction
  • Machine learning on physical systems
  • Reliability-critical analytics

This knowledge provides the technical foundation for Protplex. As a matter of fact, the name “Straintest” resonates with biological terminology (strain as in variants of organisms) reflecting its interdisciplinary nature.

Contact

Get in touch

For collaborations, feedback, or early access inquiries. We especially welcome messages from researchers in structural biology, bioinformatics, and drug discovery.