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

合成生物学通过应用工程原理（设计-构建-测试）来推进遗传操作，通过用定制DNA修饰安全的微生物来实现新的发现。编写DNA的能力已经加快，但合成生物学现在受到缺乏高通量测量方法来评估定制菌株性能的限制。拟议的项目将帝国理工学院伦敦的基础合成生物学专业知识与Sphere Fluidics Limited的微流体和质谱（MS）专业知识联系起来。这个协同团队将建立，测试和演示一个新的微流控-MS平台，该平台可以深入分析每天数十万个工程微生物的性能（传统技术使用高样本量，每天只能测试大约10，000个样本）。迄今为止，大多数合成生物学家一次只能分析一个基因。独特的是，我们的MS方法将能够分析多个基因和人工途径的组成部分。这将加速发现，改善新的有价值的药物和燃料来源的生产，并为商业化提供有价值的新生工具和服务。

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.