Automated Parallel Bioreactor Systems for High Throughput Optimization of Bioengineered Processes

全自动并行生物反应器系统可并行控制和监督多个生物反应器，可实现高通量生物处理，同时其与外部传感器和代谢物分析仪的集成可实现对生物过程的在线定性和定量分析。在工业微生物学、环境科学、生物化学和结构生物学、地质环境工程等各个领域的生物工程技术都严重依赖于高效、高功能的微生物，这些微生物能够在优化的反应条件下以最佳的速度催化特定的生化反应。这需要广泛的实验，以实现最优的微生物设计、底物制备和反应条件(介质设计)和工艺开发到技术规模(工艺设计)。并行生物反应器系统实现了这三种设计的快速、可扩展和并行优化，从而提供了集成的过程开发，并有助于缩短开发时间、降低总成本和提高实验效率。与智能传感器和代谢物分析仪的集成为微生物培养和过程实时监控提供了机会，从而加深了对过程的理解，从而实现了健壮性和可扩展性。这种在线监测和控制功能将使补料批次和连续设计的强劲发展成为工业生物处理的标准，从而实现更快的工艺放大。此外，这种先进的分析方法还有助于在平行测试方法下揭示新的代谢途径。这些将为新的微生物工艺和生物催化方法铺平道路，以通过生产生物产品来促进加拿大的生物经济；并为环境、岩土和土壤科学应用开发更新、更绿色的技术。此外，约克大学的7名主要研究人员和至少5名合作者将频繁使用该系统，每年至少培训15名HQP，验证全自动生物反应器系统的必要性和紧迫性。

Fully automated parallel bioreactor systems with control and supervision of multiple bioreactors in parallel allows high throughput bioprocessing while its integration with external sensors and metabolite analyzers enables in-line qualitative and quantitative analyses of bioprocesses. Bioengineered technologies in diverse fields such as industrial microbiology, environmental science, biochemistry and structural biology, geoenvironmental engineering etc. are critically dependent on efficient, high functioning microbes which can catalyse specific biochemical reactions at optimal rates under optimized reaction conditions. This requires extensive experimentation to achieve optimal microbe design, substrate preparation and reaction conditions (medium design) and process development to a technical scale (process design). Parallel bioreactor systems enable a rapid, scalable and parallel optimization of these three designs, thereby providing an integrated process development and facilitating a decrease in developmental timelines, reduction in overall cost and increase in experimental efficiency. Integration with smart sensors and metabolite analyzers provides the opportunity for microbial culture and process monitoring in a real-time manner which leads to a deeper process understanding for robustness and scalability. This in-line monitoring and control functionality will allow robust development of fed-batch and continuous designs which is a norm in industrial bioprocessing, thereby enabling a faster process scale-up. In addition, such advanced analytics can also be beneficial to unravel novel metabolic pathways under a parallel testing approach. These will pave the way for novel microbial processes and biocatalytic methods to boost the Canadian bio-based economy via production of bio-based products; and developing newer, greener technologies for environmental, geotechnical and soil science applications. Further, 7 key researchers and at least 5 collaborators at York University will be using the system on an intense frequency basis, training at least 15 HQP per year, validating the need and urgency of the fully automated bioreactor system.