The Cytobank API opens up our platform to workflows and creative use beyond native functionality to improve the efficiency and velocity of your research efforts. We are excited to enhance the usability of the Cytobank API with the release of BridgeR, an easy-to-use R package for biologists.
Experience working in R isn’t required. Our step-by-step guide provides instructions on how to execute the API-leveraged workflows detailed in BridgeR.
Enabled and streamlined workflows include the following:
- Apply cluster gates automatically to help you visualize clustering results (e.g. from SPADE or CITRUS) or see how annotation variables are correlated with clusters
- Bubble all individual spade nodes automatically so that you can export data from these nodes if you’re running SPADE on viSNE, meta-clustering with SPADE, or creating your own auto-bubbling tool for SPADE
- Download FCS files one at a time as zip files to help speed up your download requirements

Bubble SPADE Nodes Workflow
Above: Code to individually bubble each SPADE node
Below: Corresponding SPADE tree in the Cytobank app with each individual SPADE node bubbled
Get Started Using BridgeR:
- Read our step-by-step BridgeR Guide
- Review Using R to Interface with Cytobank Prerequisites
- Contact Cytobank Scientific Services to discuss advanced API integrations that go beyond BridgeR for your most challenging data analysis problems
- Let us know if you’re building a tool using the Cytobank API that you’d like to have featured on our blog