Acquiring a Microbioreactor System for Rapid Prototyping of Synthetic Biology
Abstract
This proposal seeks to purchase a microbioreactor system capable of parallel processing 32 distinct conditions and thus increasing the throughput of the design-build-test cycle of synthetic biology. The equipment sought after in this proposal will enable such rapid prototyping at the small scale to determine successful designs, robustness of design, and underlying biological driving forces at a speed, control, and ease unachievable with traditional lab capacity reliant on standard microbiology and culturing conditions. The core team of 5 PIs assembled for this DURIP comprises an interdisciplinary group across campus with existing, pending, and planned DoD funding across a variety of agencies including ONR, AFOSR, ARO, DTRA, and DARPA. More specifically, this equipment would interface with upwards of $9,152,284 of existing DoD funded projects and upwards of $2,134,354 of pending DoD funding. Each of these projects lie within the area of synthetic biology and cellular engineering~key areas of focus for each of the DoD research offices. This equipment will have a profound impact on advancing the competitiveness, depth, and pace of current and future DoD projects. Specifically, a microbioreactor system can enable an increased speed of 25x compared to existing experiments, a throughput that increases more than 10-fold, a 1000-fold reduction in reagent costs for certain experiments, and enables newfound capacity to understand synthetic systems
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 23, 2016
- Source ID
- N000141612562
Entities
People
- Hal S. Alper
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Texas at Austin