Scientists will Eliminate Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs with a Newly Acquired Synthetic Biology Robotics System

January 16, 2024

Scientists will use newly acquired synthetic biological robotic system to eliminate breakthrough bottlenecks
The U.S. Army awarded UC Santa Barbara a $9.85 million grant to design and purchase state-of-the-art equipment designed by project leader Michelle O'Malley that will allow the university to Embrace a trend that helps pharmaceutical and biomedical companies maximize output and profits: automation. Automation removes bottlenecks and allows us to develop and analyze extremely large data sets to find real breakthroughs.

The university will purchase workflows for robotic assembly and analysis tools to automate synthetic biology and establish the UCSB BioFoundry. “This instrument will have a transformative impact and unite everyone on campus doing cell research. It will enable researchers to think in new dimensions, design and perform large-scale experiments, push the limits of our scientific understanding, and Develop technology in ways that weren’t possible before.”

"These systems will allow us to conduct a wide range of research in areas where we have considerable expertise," O'Malley explained. Automated systems will generate large amounts of data that can be used to train artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. Researchers will be able to devote more time to analyzing data and designing experiments instead of doing tedious tasks that will be completed by robotic workflows. They will be able to computationally design cell lines to achieve specific outcomes, and then, in a process similar to evolution, use robotic workflows to prototype and evaluate thousands of possible configurations and growth conditions to identify the "best" lines. Researchers will also learn from unsuccessful engineered strains.

From:UC Satan Barbara News