SBIR Phase I: Massively scalable storage of nucleic acids using barcoded polymer packets

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响是开发一个用于存储生物材料的技术平台，这将改善公共卫生结果，并能够存储不断扩大的数字数据宇宙。核酸是21世纪世纪的新事物，它们编码着我们的健康，可以作为数字数据的替代存储介质。利用这些生物材料中编码的信息需要一种可扩展的方式来存储和获取核酸。几十年来，我们一直依赖能源密集型低温储存和昂贵的机器人技术来保持核酸的完整性，而这些技术是不可扩展的。该项目的成功成果是一种储存大量核酸的替代解决方案，无需使用冷冻机，并实现利用核酸材料的新产品。该项目将为开发低成本可扩展的核酸材料解决方案奠定基础。目前的方法受到低温要求的限制，以避免核酸的降解，需要恒定的电力供应和昂贵的机器人。相反，该项目的重点是在室温下保持核酸的完整性数十年，同时通过利用分子在溶液中的快速扩散，实现类似于计算机或互联网搜索引擎的搜索和检索功能。这一雄心勃勃的目标将通过使用与生物材料相容的新型合成聚合物来实现，以实现核酸的快速封装，同时提供长期保护，而无需低温。通过该项目发现的合成聚合物将使用纯化的核酸（包括动物、细菌或病毒基因组）进行测试，以证明可用于拟议技术的材料的能力和广度。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is the development of a technology platform for storing biological materials that will improve public health outcomes and enable the storage of the ever-expanding digital data universe. Nucleic acids are the new bits of the 21st century; they encode our health and can be repurposed as alternative storage media for digital data. Harnessing the information encoded in these biological materials requires a scalable way to store and access nucleic acids. For decades, we have relied on energy-intensive low-temperature storage and expensive robotics to maintain the integrity of nucleic acids, which are not scalable. The successful outcome of this proposal is an alternative solution to store massive amounts of nucleic acids, obviating the need for freezers and enabling new products that leverage nucleic acid materials.The proposed project will lay the foundation for developing a low-cost scalable solution for nucleic acid materials. Current approaches are limited by the requirement of low temperature to circumvent the degradation of nucleic acids, requiring a constant supply of electricity and expensive robotics. Instead, the proposed project focuses on maintaining the integrity of nucleic acids for decades at room temperature and simultaneously enabling search and retrieval functions akin to a computer or internet search engine by leveraging the rapid diffusion of molecules in solution. This ambitious goal will be achieved by using novel synthetic polymers that are made compatible with biological materials to enable rapid encapsulation of nucleic acids while providing long-term protection without the need for low temperature. The resulting synthetic polymers discovered through the project will be tested using purified nucleic acids, including animal, bacterial, or viral genomes, to demonstrate the capabilities and breadth of materials that can be used for the proposed technology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.