Living Foundries
Abstract
The goal of the Living Foundries program was to create a revolutionary, biologically-based manufacturing platform for the DoD and the Nation. With its ability to perform complex chemistries, be flexibly programmed through DNA code, scale and adapt to changing environments and self-repair, biology represents one of the most powerful manufacturing platforms known. Living Foundries developed the foundational technological infrastructure to transform biology into an engineering practice, speeding the biological design-build-test-learn cycle and expanding the complexity of systems that can be engineered. Ultimately, Living Foundries provided game-changing manufacturing paradigms for the DoD, enabling adaptable, on-demand production of critical and high-value molecules. Living Foundries developed tools to simplify, abstract, and standardize the biological production pathway optimization process. Additionally, Living Foundries identified the fundamental design rules that govern the construction and organization of underlying genetic elements in the production pathways. Research thrusts included development of the fundamental tools, capabilities, and methodologies to accelerate the biological design-build-test cycle, thereby reducing the extensive cost and time it takes to engineer new systems and expanding the complexity and accuracy of designs that can be built. This resulted in rapid design, construction, implementation, and testing of complex, higher-order genetic networks with programmable functionality. Applied research for this program was budgeted in PE 0602715E, Project MBT-02.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Accomplishment
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2020
- Source ID
- eafca65ccf64b51671456ee6b33c6927