@KCav That makes sense, thanks for clarifying!

Follow-up question: Are there low-throughput experiments that could be performed with the $5k microscope objective (plus co-opted lab equipment+reagents) that would provide validation of the concept in advance of a high-throughput scale-up? (adding +$25k?)

@adityajain42 My instinct is that, with the effect sizes you're claiming (+200%?), just 3 genes should give clear enough results to make a full 30-gene experiment a "clear yes" for follow-on funding. So considering the marginal value of the last ~$17k (compared to an initial $3k), I think it mostly comes down to faster timeline at the cost of some probability (30%?) of wasting the costs of genes 4 through 30.

(Let me know if you don't think that 3 genes would be >90% to demonstrate a clearly definitive result, conditional on the full panel returning a positive result.)

I'm not sure how much to care about publishing the intermediate result (since the next step would be going to the full 30-gene panel), so the main delay is in how much longer the two-stage (3+27) experiment would take than a one-stage (30 in parallel) experiment would. (Assuming you don't stop to publish the intermediate result.) Can you give a sense of the additional calendar time for two-stage?

I don't quite understand your use-of-funds explanation. At the $20k-30k level, what stages are being supported by the funds raised here, and what stages discussed in the "longer description" will be deferred to future grants?

Can you explain what your plans are for outcomes where you raise less than $20k? What would you do on $1k, $3k, $10k, or $15k budgets?

Do you have other sources of funding that you're courting? And, given them, how should we think about the counterfactuality of the marginal dollar here from the Impact Certs round?

(Context: I am considering funding for ≥$1k, but am not decided. I could be more interested if there were a smaller pilot experiment that would derisk the scientific risk.)

It looks like the primary (65%+) portion of the cost is for plasmid orders at $50 / plasmid. Can you post your diligence on the available suppliers, why you've picked the one you did, and check that this is the wholesale / bulk cost, not the retail / one-off? It seems surprisingly high to me, but I don't have an experience in this niche of the supply chain, so I'd like more info there.

Oh, there are three kinds of plasmid, and it's three copies of each.

I don't know how to delete / edit my prior comment, but feel free to ignore it.

typical preliminary wet lab tests involve 30 genes. We would need to order the original plasmid, the modified ICOR plasmid, and the modified industry competitor plasmid. To do robust statistical analysis, we would manufacture 3x. As the cost for each plasmid is ~$50 (depends on size of plasmid sequence), this comes out to about $13,500.

30 \* 3 \* $50 = $4,500 but you've written a total of $13,500. Can you explain the discrepancy?