SBIR Phase II: An Intelligent Rapid Prototyping System for Synthetic Biology

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will be to accelerate the pace of microbe development for the biomanufacture of valuable proteins, advanced enzymes for industry, or therapeutic medicines. DNA cloning is an everyday practice in the course of both industrial- and university-based research. Cloning technology has remained largely unchanged for the last 20 years. As a consequence, researchers consume a significant amount of time and money designing and constructing DNA, rather than on designing and conducting experiments. Over the past few years, standardized experimental DNA construction methods have been developed that lend themselves well to automation and rapid assembly of DNA. Process automation is progressing from luxury to necessity, as target applications demand the fabrication of large combinatorial DNA libraries in the search for better antibodies, faster enzymes, and more productive microbial strains. The proposed technology will allow rapid forward engineered biological libraries of recombinant DNA. The commercial availability of this technology will provide a low cost alternative to current methods. This SBIR Phase II project aims to develop a bioCAD/CAM (Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing) technology that enables rapid DNA assembly for synthetic biology. Wedding recent advances in DNA assembly methods, and the software algorithms used to design those DNA assemblies, the proposed research will result in a platform technology for facilitating an optimized combination of direct synthesis and DNA assembly to make large combinatorial libraries. After the construction of the DNA libraries, screening for constructs with the desired activity remains a major scale-limiting bottleneck, both in terms of cost and time. The proposed technology will allow rapid prototyping and characterization of forward engineered biological libraries of recombinant DNA, proteins, or whole cells. The goal is to commercialize an easy-to-use platform for assembling complex constructs onto vector backbones, transfecting them into host microbes, and doing a rapid assessment of product yield. Results are captured, saved, and returned to a design database after data cleansing and analysis.