View source for Glossary of Molecular Reality jargon

{{Short description|Words coined or used in a special sense by Molecular Reality Corporation}}
{{See also|Glossary of nanopore terms|List of Molecular Reality Corporation puns}}
This glossary defines the words that [[Molecular Reality Corporation]] coined, or uses in a sense of its own, in its games, member software, essays and plans. Many name problems the company has not solved, or devices and models it has not built, and it labels those as plans. Others are a unit of time, a form of address and the controls of a game console. Where a word has its own article, the entry links to it. General terms of the science, such as ''current blockade'' and ''translocation'', are in the [[glossary of nanopore terms]].

The company's founder, [[Kent Kemmish]], describes himself as "a verbal anarchist".<ref name="mamba">{{cite web |title=Mambapore |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-29}}</ref> Many of the words below are his.

== A ==
;AEST
:"Accelerationist-Equivalent-Subjective-Time". A post of 2026 dates the first slide deck of [[demonpore, inc.]] to "several thousand years ago in AEST", "i.e., around 2015".<ref name="minds">{{cite web |title=Welcome to my Minds |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-28}}</ref>
;[[Analytically universal single device]] (A.U.S.D.)
:An instrument that could measure and identify any molecule, cell or particle on its own, without a separate test for each target. Members were once offered a quest worth 1,000 experience points to discuss one: "Imagine an analytical universal single device! Let's discuss."<ref name="records">{{cite web |title=Company records |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=October 2026}}</ref>

== B ==
;[[Biology Is Just Beginning]]
:The tagline set under the company's double-helix wordmark, with a small trademark sign, in every colorway of the mark.
;[[Biopopulism]]
:The movement the company hopes to build, in which ordinary people own molecular sensors and do biology once confined to laboratories and hospitals. "We view this as a movement first, and a corporation second."<ref name="site26">{{cite web |title=Molecular Reality Corporation (website) |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=2026-02-26}}</ref>
;[[BioSingularity TELETHON]]
:The name under which live sessions with the founder are announced in the member software, by a ticker reading "BioSingularity TELETHON live NOW click to join".<ref name="records" />
;The brain
:Company shorthand for the companies that build large artificial intelligence models for science, such as [[Isomorphic Labs]] and [[Lila Sciences]]. The company calls itself the eye. See [[brain lab]].
;[[The brainbot]]
:A chatbot planned in 2022 for the control panel of ''[[Maxine's Quest]]''.

== C ==
;[[Church of Sequence Space]]
:A cultural side project devoted to DNA and other "aperiodic polymers", molecules whose order of units carries information; in the company's lore the founder started it in 2013.
;[[Clay TV]]
:A television set modeled in pink clay in a corner of ''Maxine's Quest'', meant to show the live current through the company's pore. In the standard version of the game it shows a flat line.
;[[Condiment trials]]
:Tests that run kitchen condiments past the pore of the company's live stream, beginning with a ketchup, a salsa and a mustard in 2026. The field guide's reason: "The road to the small end runs through the big end, and the big end loves ketchup."<ref name="faq">{{cite web |url=https://molecularreality.com/FAQ |title=Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=August 2026}}</ref>
;[[CoronaPore]]
:The 2020 project to launch the [[Molecular Aquarium]] early, as a response to COVID-19.
;Corpspeople
:The form of address that [[The Quartermaster]] uses for members of the [[Molecular Streaming Corps]]: "Corpspeople, stand at attention!"<ref name="line">{{cite web |title=The Line |author=Quartermaster |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-29}}</ref>

== D ==
;Daemon Pore
:The working name of the [[MR1 Nanopore Reader]] until a commit of October 18, 2026, which renamed it.
;Data TV
:A screen in the 2022 design of ''Maxine's Quest'' that "shows live current data from the amplifier, and can also be switched to different channels that show various real-time data analytics, such as 2D histograms".<ref name="dis22">{{cite web |title=Scientific and technical overview |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=December 2022}}</ref>
;demonpore
:The company's name from its incorporation in 2018 until 2021, taken from [[Maxwell's demon]]. See [[demonpore, inc.]]
;[[demonpore 64]]
:The prototype nanopore reader of 2020 and 2021, built in the shape of a 1980s game console.
;[[Dumb problems]]
:The founder's term for the routine obstacles between a [[solid-state nanopore]] experiment and its first useful data. "The biggest, ugliest, dumbest one is: how do you get water through the pore?"<ref name="fib">{{cite web |title=Focused Ion Beam pore |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-29}}</ref>

== E ==
;[[Epic Quest Bio]] (EQBio)
:The role-playing game through which the company organizes its work and its volunteers, formerly called Epic Quest Biotechnology.
;[[EQBio-OS]]
:The member software, an inbox with tabs for EQBio-OS, the [[Molecular Streaming Corps]] and [[Minds of Maxine]].
;[[Everybody's racing to build the brain]]
:The company's slogan, in full "everybody's racing to build the brain, we're building the eye.", the only sentence on its homepage from August 19 to October 25, 2026.
;[[Experigaming]]
:Experiments run as video games, in which the player's controls operate a real laboratory instrument and the events of the game are made from its measurements. The word appears in the company's December 2022 overview.<ref name="dis22" />
;The eye
:The company's name for itself and its sensors. Its emblem, [[The Seeing Eye]], is an eye with a protein emerging from the pupil.

== G ==
;[[The Golden Blueprint]]
:The design that would answer the Golden Question: the drawings and manufacturing details of a cheap sensor that needs no reagents made for a particular target.
;[[The Golden Question]]
:The first question the company asks of its research, in the words of its member software's tour: "how do we build cheap, [...], label-free, high-throughput, analytically universal molecular sensing devices?"<ref name="tour">{{cite web |title=EQBio-OS tour |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=2026}}</ref>

== H ==
;[[Holey Grail]]
:Reading DNA base by base with a solid-state pore, which no laboratory has published, priced at 9,900,000 experience points on the company's quest board. With an asterisk, the Holey Grail* is the same feat done with chemical labels on the DNA, "where the asterisk is 'required labels but it's a damn good start.'"<ref name="labels">{{cite web |title=Magic with labels |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-29}}</ref>
;[[The Hole Enchilada]]
:A section of the founder's 2025 essay on Epic Quest Bio, retelling the invention of the [[Coulter counter]].
;[[The Hole World]]
:The company's online atlas of molecular-sensing research groups, published in September 2026.

== I ==
;[[Iridian]]
:A gallery of 197 animated images, "197 Views of the Seeing Eye", in most of which an eye opens and a molecular structure emerges from its pupil. It has been online since July 24, 2026.

== J ==
;[[Journey to Angstromia]]
:A section of the same essay, and the company's name for its plan of working from large pores toward small ones. The field guide: "we are walking it from the big end toward the small."<ref name="faq" />
;[[Juxtapore]]
:"A juxtapore is a pore formed by two surfaces sliding alongside each other, their edges close enough to form the sensing gap."<ref name="faq" /> The guide calls it "our own word, chosen because it says precisely what the thing does".

== K ==
;Kardashev level
:A measure of a civilization's command of energy, after the [[Kardashev scale]]. Company copy of February 2026 calls the volunteer network "a virtual machine that we could not build monolithically at our Kardashev level."<ref name="site26" />
;[[Keltar]]
:The company's mascot, a green felt puppet with one eye, who describes himself as "a puppet with a processor".<ref name="faq" />
;[[Kemmishtree]]
:The online name of the founder, and his byline in the member software.

== L ==
;[[Ludician]]
:The character class of game designers, from the Latin ''ludus'', "game".

== M ==
;[[Keltar-fresh]]
:An item on the member software's list of provisions: "It costs us a few cents to make, smells like mint chocolate, and will let you display your allegiance to the mission in a delicious smelling way. ETA: March 2026". The estimate had not been changed by October 2026.<ref name="records" />
;[[Mambapore]]
:The founder's name for the method of a 2025 paper that sorts nanopore signals with a [[Mamba (deep learning)|Mamba]] neural network. The paper's authors did not use it.<ref name="mamba" />
;[[Maxine (character)|Maxine]]
:The company's cartoon of Maxwell's demon, a red clay imp.
;[[Minds of Maxine]]
:A tab of the member software in Maxine's voice, described as an "AI-human Society of Minds".<ref name="minds" />
;[[Molecular Aquarium]]
:A silicon chip, begun in January 2020, on which one plate of pores slides over arrays of others "like a vernier caliper". Its arrays have not been tested.
;Molecular Gaming Console
:The company's description of the [[demonpore 64]], "the world's first 'Molecular Gaming Console'", usually with a trademark sign.<ref name="records" />
;[[Molecular Self-Play]] (MSP)
:A pore that catches a single molecule, measures it many times and lets it go, guided by its own measurements. Tag line: "TRAP · SENSE · RELEASE · REPEAT".<ref name="msp">{{cite web |url=https://molecularreality.com/MSP |title=Molecular Self-Play |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=July 2026}}</ref>
;[[Molecular streaming]]
:Detecting molecules with small sensors and sending the measurements live over the internet. The founder gave two reasons for the name: molecules stream through the detectors, and the data streams to people.<ref name="orders">{{cite web |title=Marching orders |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-28}}</ref>
;[[Molecular Streaming Corps]] (MSC)
:The company's volunteer community, founded in 2024 as the Molecular Streaming Services Corps. The old initials, M.S.S.C., are still on the paper sign of Keltar's mug.
;[[Molecular tomography]]
:A proposed way to identify one molecule by measuring it in a pore under many conditions and combining the results, as a CT scanner combines X-ray projections.
;[[Molecular TV]] (MTV)
:The company's homepage in the first half of 2025, a channel of [[texteract]]s.
;[[Molecupedia]]
:The encyclopedia in which this glossary appears, "The Encyclopedia of Very Small Things".

== N ==
;[[Nanopore printing]]
:An unrealized plan of 2022 to make pores inside the console's cartridges with pulses of electricity.
;[[The Nanopore World Model]]
:"a planned public domain model, trained on our streamed data, that learns what signal producing events look like in a pore". The field guide introduces it, with RLMF, as one of two proposals.<ref name="faq" />

== P ==
;[[Planetary Bioshield]]
:The defensive half of utility-scale molecular sensing: a worldwide network of sensors that would give early warning of pandemics.
;[[Player Scientist]]
:The title of a volunteer who plays Epic Quest Bio, often written with a trademark sign.
;Potion platter
:A control in the 2022 design of ''Maxine's Quest'' for telling the system which reagents had been added to the sample.<ref name="dis22" />
;[[Pre-Wright Brothers Flights]]
:The caption under which the company's video catalog lists a recording of one of its first sliding-occlusion experiments, of about 2015 or 2016.

== R ==
;[[Radical openness (Molecular Reality)|Radical openness]]
:The policy that the company's designs, protocols, data and models should be public: "We want to be radically open".<ref name="site26" />
;[[Rain of blood (demonpore)|Rain of blood]]
:The experiment of late 2018 in which the founder bled into a flow cell, the first sample of any kind put through one of the company's adjustable pores.
;[[RLMF]]
:"Reinforcement Learning with Molecular Feedback", a proposal to train artificial intelligence with rewards measured by molecular sensors instead of human ratings.<ref name="rlmf">{{cite web |title=RLMF |website=molecularreality.com |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=2026-06-29}}</ref>

== S ==
;Sciencer
:The original name of the Scientist [[Character classes of Epic Quest Bio|character class]]. The essay that introduced it says that the name "anthimeriates 'science' full circle, from noun to verb and back to noun" (see [[anthimeria]]).<ref name="essay" />
;[[Sliding occlusion]]
:"one surface or pore slides over another, occluding a path for ions, thus changing the effective cross-section of the pore".<ref name="dis22" /> The founding idea of the company.
;[[Speeding bullet problem]]
:The fact that DNA crosses a bare solid-state pore too fast for its bases to be read one at a time; in the help file, "DNA moves too fast".<ref name="osfaq">{{cite web |title=Frequently asked questions |website=EQBio-OS |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=2026}}</ref>
;[[Spyke Hunter]]
:The first game the company coded, in 2020 or 2021, whose targets were the spikes made by knots in a nylon filament pulled through a hole about 2 mm wide. The founder calls it "the unfortunately named 'Spyke Hunter'", after the arcade game ''[[Spy Hunter]]''.<ref name="string">{{cite web |title=Sequencing a string |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-29}}</ref>

== T ==
;[[Team Basic Sanity]]
:From the founder's 2025 essay: "We're all on Team Basic Sanity."<ref name="essay">{{cite web |title=Epic Quest Bio |author=Kemmishtree |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |year=2025}}</ref>
;[[Teamonpore]]
:The founder's name for the staff of demonpore, "most of teamonpore" having watched the rain of blood.
;[[Texteract]]
:An animated tesseract made from a piece of writing.
;[[Theranos Derangement Syndrome]]
:A condition named in the same essay for readers who doubt the company: "Don't worry, just take 15 milligrams of Epic Quest Bio™ for a complete recovery."<ref name="essay" />
;[[Tulpa]]
:A being brought into existence by thought. Keltar is "personal tulpa to Kemmishtree".<ref name="records" />

== U ==
;[[Ultra-Device]]
:A thought experiment of 2022, one instrument with several thousand independently controllable channels. The volunteers and their instruments are meant to add up to a "Virtual Ultra-Device".
;[[Unidentified Signal Producing Event]] (USPE)
:"a unique molecular fingerprint or electrical signature generated by an uncharacterized substance passing through the nanopore", in the help file.<ref name="help">{{cite web |title=EQBio-OS help: Data, AI & Community Ecosystem |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=2026}}</ref>
;[[Universal Molecular Streaming]] (UMS)
:The founder's shorter name for the company's long-range goal: "I came up with Universal Molecular Streaming because it's fewer syllables."<ref name="bigpicture">{{cite web |title=Big Picture |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-28}}</ref>
;[[Universe wrapper]]
:The art, story and scoring of one game laid over the company's instrument software, in which spikes in the current spawn monsters.
;[[Utility-scale molecular sensing]]
:"Molecular sensing with the scale, economics, and universal adoption of electricity, running water, and internet."<ref name="northstar">{{cite web |title=Our North Star: Utility-Scale Molecular Sensing |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=2022}}</ref>

== V ==
;[[The Very Big Question]]
:"How do we build compact cheap passive durable single devices that can 'see' any molecule without affinity labels?"<ref name="minds" />

== W ==
;[[Whisper in a thunderstorm problem]]
:The difference in current between two DNA bases is smaller than the noise of a measurement fast enough to see it; in the help file, "signals are too faint".<ref name="osfaq" />
;[[World Particle Project]] (WPP)
:A planned catalog of the signals of particles from water, soil, air and breath, "indexed by biological source and, with environmental samples, GPS-tagging".<ref name="dis22" />

== X ==
;XP
:[[Experience points (Epic Quest Bio)|Experience points]], the game points of Epic Quest Bio, earned for quests that range from reporting a bug to the Holey Grail.

== Z ==
;Zapper stick
:A red-handled control that "applies a brief spike of maximum voltage" across the pore. See [[the zapper]].<ref name="dis22" />
;[[Zeptoliter]]
:10<sup>−21</sup> liter, a cube 10 nm on a side. The founder headed a message "Zeptoliter is My Favorite Unit of Measurement".<ref name="zepto">{{cite web |title=Zeptoliter Nanobridge |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-29}}</ref>

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

{{Molecular Reality}}

[[Category:Molecular Reality Corporation]]
[[Category:Glossaries]]