A High Throughput Miniaturised Mass Spectrometry Tool for Profiling Synthetic Design Libraries

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Synthetic biology has advanced genetic manipulation by applying engineering principles (Design-Build-Test) to enable new discoveries by modifying safe microbes with custom DNA. The ability to write DNA has accelerated, but synthetic biology is now limited by a lack of high-throughput measurement methods to assess performance of custom-built strains. The proposed project links foundational synthetic biology expertise at Imperial College London with microfluidics and mass spectrometry (MS) expertise at Sphere Fluidics Limited. This synergistic team will build, test and demonstrate a new microfluidics-MS platform that enables in-depth analysis of the performance of hundreds of thousands of engineered microbes per day (conventional techniques use high sample volumes and can only test around 10,000 samples a day). To date, most synthetic biologists have only been able to analyse one gene at a time. Uniquely, our MS approach will enable analysis of multiple genes and components of artificial pathways. This will accelerate the discovery, and improve production of new, valuable medicines and fuel sources, and generate valuable, nascent Tools and Services for commercialisation.