About Cybertory

The Cybertory Virtual Molecular Biology Laboratory is a web-based educational platform for teaching fundamental concepts and techniques of molecular biology, molecular genetics, and bioinformatics. The software supports a wide range of simulation-based problem solving exercises targeted to different learners. Our open-source companion website (cybertory.org) hosts an assortment of example exercises, including paternity testing, forensic identification, and DNA sequencing, based on our open-source simulation modules. These simulations are used around the world.

Here at cybertory.com, these simulation modules are integrated behind a Flash user interface, making a virtual laboratory where experiments are performed by mixing DNA samples and reagents in tubes with a pipette, incubating them with enzymes, running them in the PCR machine, performing gel analysis, and so forth. We are also developing services and curricular materials to make it easier to use these exercises in classrooms and on-line courses.

There are two main web sites resulting from the Cybertory Project. The basic simulation modules, with HTML form-based interfaces and a variety of protocols and other resources, are available at cybertory.org. This site (cybertory.com) offers a more integrated experience, and a variety of commercial support services and teaching resources.

The open source site at www.cybertory.org gives you access to the free software of the simulation modules the work behind the scenes at both web sites. That software is free in the open source sense of giving you the freedom to modify and re-distribute the code for your own purposes, under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Most of the documentation and illustrations on that site are available under the Creative Commons license, which gives you similar freedoms.

This site (cybertory.com) is intended to build upon the basic simulations and offer a more integrated educational environment as a commercial service. It includes some additional software (such as the Virtual Laboratory written in Flash) as well as databases for student laboratory configuration management and performance monitoring. The virtual laboratory has been integrated into an online Course Management System (Moodle) that helps us present background, instruction and context for virtual laboratory exercises.

Most of the free software available from this project is hosted on our open-source companion site, cybertory.org. Certain of the resources at this site are also available for use without charge, but they are in general not open source.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions, comments, praise, criticisms, witticisms, or vociferations, or if you would like to suggest topics that require further explanation, explication, or elucidation.

All materials on this web site are copyrighted by Attotron Biotechnolgies Corporation unless otherwise indicated.