Press clip from Amyris, the bioscience company

How Synthetic Biology Transforms Sugar to Save Lives and the Planet

Scientists use a microfermenter as an interim screening step, featuring tiny IoT oxygen and pH sensors, plus channels that feed in sugar, base, or acid manipulations.

Extract from article:

Scaling Up. Amyris signed a Technology Investment Agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on the Milligrams to Kilograms Project to scale up production of compounds in kilograms or metric tons.

The company is also building a massive library of DNA parts, so when a scientist submits a design, the software can see if it has already been made. If not, it suggests how to build it.

“The analogy I’d give is LEGOs,” Chandran says. “The ends are analogous to each other, which is the same with DNA. If I give you five LEGO parts and say, ‘Make a small car,’ that’s easy. Now let’s say I give you 10,000 LEGO parts and ask you to make 1,000 LEGO cars. That’s difficult. But it’s a lot easier if I give you a database that contains all the LEGO parts and a software tool that matches which parts from the database need to go into which car, and it’s even easier with a robot picking all these LEGO parts and mixing them together in the right order.”

At Amyris, the funnel of activity starts with around 1.2 million yeast strains. They all go through the screening process, and winners move on to fermentation for further testing. “But we are still at times sending strains from a screening lab to a fermentation lab that are false positives, so having the historical expertise—as we do—to rule those out as candidates is mandatory to achieve success,” Chandran says.

To reduce false positives, scientists use a microfermenter as an interim screening step—a miniature lab that fits in the palm of their hands, featuring tiny IoT oxygen and pH sensors, plus channels that feed in sugar, base, or acid manipulations.

Watch the video: FlowerPlate with microfluidic chip

Complete article and source: redshift.autodesk.com/synthetic-biology/