Automated Approaches to Cellular Engineering and Biomanufacturing

Genome-scale predictable cellular design and engineering of biomanufacturing systems is the overarching a goal of DARPA's Living Foundry thrust and, if realized, will enable rapid engineering of living biosystems for a broad range of applications in biotechnology and pharmacology. However, constructing living cells with designed genome is not fully automated and is severely limited by inherent challenges in engineering biological systems replicability and reproducibility - which are lagging behind due to a vast diversity of the complex networks of bioreactions involved. Parameters of such reactions (reaction pathways and kinetics) need to be established for targeted environments in order to achieve robust predictability of transfer functions in the living foundry design. To achieve such predictability, Covitect and its partners propose to use array of multiplexed in-vitro membrane-microreactors interfaced with assays, which emulate cell environment and allow the rapid study of complex reaction networks in a controlled environment with excellent reproducibility, high throughput and low cost. The end goal of the proposed effort is to develop an automated in-vitro synthetic biology analysis toolset for establishing parameters (i.e,"transfer functions"in the Living Foundry terms) of a large number of bioreactions that will enable predictable and reproducible cellular design and engineering.