BioGist by Oric Labs
Get the biological gist of any research paper. Auto-detects genes, variants, and datasets on any webpage.
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About this extension
BioGist is a research sidebar that scans any webpage for biological entities and provides instant context — no uploads, no server, no account.
HOW IT WORKS
Visit a paper on PubMed, bioRxiv, Nature, or any scientific website. Open the sidebar and click Scan. BioGist detects 18 types of biological entities on the page. Click any entity for details, database links, and related papers from PubMed.
WHAT IT DETECTS
BioGist recognizes genes, variants, dataset accessions, species, bioinformatics methods, genome builds, sample sizes, statistical methods, sequencing platforms, cell lines, tissues, drugs, clinical trial IDs, funding sources, code repositories, p-values, file links, and key findings — 18 entity types in total. Gene detection uses the full HGNC set of 44,959 human gene symbols.
DETAIL PANELS
Click any detected entity to see rich details pulled from public databases. Gene panels show summaries from NCBI and UniProt. Variant panels show allele frequencies from gnomAD and clinical significance from ClinVar. DOI panels show citation counts, authors, and open access links via OpenAlex, with citation export in APA, Vancouver, Harvard, BibTeX, or RIS format.
INLINE PUBMED SEARCH
Click "Find Related Papers" in any entity detail to see the top 5 PubMed results directly in the sidebar — titles, authors, journal, and year — without leaving the page.
DATABASE LINKS
Every entity links out to relevant databases including NCBI, Ensembl, UniProt, GeneCards, OMIM, ClinicalTrials.gov, DrugBank, Cellosaurus, bio.tools, NIH Reporter, PubMed, and Google Scholar.
RESEARCH TOOLS
- Compare two papers side by side to see shared and unique entities
- Co-occurrence matrix showing which entity types appear together across tabs
- Persistent entity history with search and type filter across sessions
- Batch scan up to 20 URLs at once
- Personal annotation notes on any entity
- Export as plain text, JSON, Markdown, CSV, or BibTeX with scope and type filters
ADDITIONAL FEATURES
- Adaptive toolbar that collapses into a menu on narrow sidebars
- Multi-tab scanning with per-tab result storage
- Pin important entities across sessions
- Keyboard shortcuts for sidebar toggle and scan
- Right-click context menu for quick lookups
- Paste button for scanning text from PDFs
- Entity type toggles to show or hide any of the 18 types
- Light and dark themes
- 24-hour local caching of API results
PRIVACY
All entity detection runs locally in your browser. No page content is uploaded anywhere. The extension only contacts public APIs (NCBI, UniProt, myvariant.info, CrossRef, OpenAlex) when you click an entity to view details. No analytics, no tracking, no account required.
Report issues: https://github.com/oriclabs/biolang/issues
Built by Oric Labs — https://lang.bio
HOW IT WORKS
Visit a paper on PubMed, bioRxiv, Nature, or any scientific website. Open the sidebar and click Scan. BioGist detects 18 types of biological entities on the page. Click any entity for details, database links, and related papers from PubMed.
WHAT IT DETECTS
BioGist recognizes genes, variants, dataset accessions, species, bioinformatics methods, genome builds, sample sizes, statistical methods, sequencing platforms, cell lines, tissues, drugs, clinical trial IDs, funding sources, code repositories, p-values, file links, and key findings — 18 entity types in total. Gene detection uses the full HGNC set of 44,959 human gene symbols.
DETAIL PANELS
Click any detected entity to see rich details pulled from public databases. Gene panels show summaries from NCBI and UniProt. Variant panels show allele frequencies from gnomAD and clinical significance from ClinVar. DOI panels show citation counts, authors, and open access links via OpenAlex, with citation export in APA, Vancouver, Harvard, BibTeX, or RIS format.
INLINE PUBMED SEARCH
Click "Find Related Papers" in any entity detail to see the top 5 PubMed results directly in the sidebar — titles, authors, journal, and year — without leaving the page.
DATABASE LINKS
Every entity links out to relevant databases including NCBI, Ensembl, UniProt, GeneCards, OMIM, ClinicalTrials.gov, DrugBank, Cellosaurus, bio.tools, NIH Reporter, PubMed, and Google Scholar.
RESEARCH TOOLS
- Compare two papers side by side to see shared and unique entities
- Co-occurrence matrix showing which entity types appear together across tabs
- Persistent entity history with search and type filter across sessions
- Batch scan up to 20 URLs at once
- Personal annotation notes on any entity
- Export as plain text, JSON, Markdown, CSV, or BibTeX with scope and type filters
ADDITIONAL FEATURES
- Adaptive toolbar that collapses into a menu on narrow sidebars
- Multi-tab scanning with per-tab result storage
- Pin important entities across sessions
- Keyboard shortcuts for sidebar toggle and scan
- Right-click context menu for quick lookups
- Paste button for scanning text from PDFs
- Entity type toggles to show or hide any of the 18 types
- Light and dark themes
- 24-hour local caching of API results
PRIVACY
All entity detection runs locally in your browser. No page content is uploaded anywhere. The extension only contacts public APIs (NCBI, UniProt, myvariant.info, CrossRef, OpenAlex) when you click an entity to view details. No analytics, no tracking, no account required.
Report issues: https://github.com/oriclabs/biolang/issues
Built by Oric Labs — https://lang.bio
Rated 0 by 0 reviewers
Permissions and data
Required permissions:
- Access browser tabs
- Access browser activity during navigation
- Access your data for all websites
Data collection:
- The developer says this extension doesn't require data collection.
More information
- Add-on Links
- Version
- 1.1.0
- Size
- 224.17 KB
- Last updated
- 4 days ago (Mar 18, 2026)
- Related Categories
- License
- MIT License
- Privacy Policy
- Read the privacy policy for this add-on
- Version History
- Add to collection
databases. All entity detection runs locally using bundled JavaScript and the HGNC gene symbol list (44,959 symbols).
Network requests are only made when the user clicks an entity to fetch details from public APIs (NCBI, UniProt, gnomAD, ClinVar, CrossRef,
OpenAlex). No page content is uploaded to any server.
No account required. No tracking. No analytics.