I've run into cases where rather than changing values for groups of wells with the same condition, I want to set the same value for multiple conditions across wells.
For example, imagine an experiment where you are testing the effect in some reaction of 20 different reagents (called A,B,C...,T) at 10 different concentrations ranging from 1µM to 10µM. For this example, let's say the reagents A to T are each in columns of a 384-well plate, and the concentrations are in rows.
Currently, you'd have to set up the conditions for the wells for A, then B, then C, all the way to T, each with the same concentration (20 steps, 1/reagent), then go through and set up the concentration gradient for each reagent one by one (20*10 = 200 steps).
What I'm suggesting is you could select an entire row (with reagents A to T in it), then select those reagents (ideally from a list of all reagents actually present in those wells for ease of use), then set the concentration of that row to e.g. 2µM, and have this change the concentrations for all the relevant reagents in each well (i.e. change A in every well it's in, B in every well it's in, and so on) all at once.
This way, you'd only have to lay out the other reaction components that they all share, then setup each reagent A to T in a column (20 steps, 1/reagent), then adjust the concentration in each row (10 steps, 1 step/row), which would be so much easier (30 steps vs. 220).
I've run into cases where rather than changing values for groups of wells with the same condition, I want to set the same value for multiple conditions across wells.
For example, imagine an experiment where you are testing the effect in some reaction of 20 different reagents (called A,B,C...,T) at 10 different concentrations ranging from 1µM to 10µM. For this example, let's say the reagents A to T are each in columns of a 384-well plate, and the concentrations are in rows.
Currently, you'd have to set up the conditions for the wells for A, then B, then C, all the way to T, each with the same concentration (20 steps, 1/reagent), then go through and set up the concentration gradient for each reagent one by one (20*10 = 200 steps).
What I'm suggesting is you could select an entire row (with reagents A to T in it), then select those reagents (ideally from a list of all reagents actually present in those wells for ease of use), then set the concentration of that row to e.g. 2µM, and have this change the concentrations for all the relevant reagents in each well (i.e. change A in every well it's in, B in every well it's in, and so on) all at once.
This way, you'd only have to lay out the other reaction components that they all share, then setup each reagent A to T in a column (20 steps, 1/reagent), then adjust the concentration in each row (10 steps, 1 step/row), which would be so much easier (30 steps vs. 220).