What is The Assay?

The word works on three levels. An assay is a test - you run it to find out if something actually works. An essay is an argument - you write it to find out if an idea actually holds. And field notes are what you take when you’re in the middle of something you don’t fully understand yet.

That’s this blog.

The Assay is Mandrake Bio’s research notebook, made public. We write about protein design, gene editing, and the hard problems that sit at the intersection of biology, machine learning, and chemistry. We share what’s working, what isn’t, and - more often than we’d like - what we thought was working until it very clearly wasn’t.

The posts are rigorous. Occasionally irreverent. Always honest, including about our own assumptions.

Why subscribe?

Because the best thinking in science happens before the paper — in the lab notebook, the Slack thread, the argument that runs too long over coffee. We’re putting that thinking in public, because we believe the field moves faster when it’s honest about where it actually is.

No hype. No press releases. Just the work.

Who is this for?

Anyone who finds the frontier genuinely interesting. You don’t need to be a protein engineer - but you should be comfortable with ideas that aren’t fully resolved yet. We’ll meet you there.