The U.S. Army has awarded the University of California, Santa Barbara's newly established Biological Engineering Department a $9.85 million grant to revolutionize its research capabilities, courtesy of the Department of Defense's Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP). The grant will propel UCSB into the forefront of automated synthetic biology, which could redefine the university's scientific discovery landscape.

Professor Michelle O'Malley, a professor of chemical engineering and biological engineering and leader of the ambitious project, expressed enthusiasm about the grant, stating that it will empower UCSB scientists to achieve unprecedented feats. "[The grant] allows UCSB scientists to do things that we never thought were possible," O'Malley affirmed.

The funding addresses a critical throughput bottleneck in synthetic biology. “at the end of the day, a researcher still has only two hands and a finite number of hours to spend in a lab,” emphasized O'Malley. Researchers must contend with the limitations of manual manipulation of biological processes, including time and resource constraints. “As a result, most researchers are never able to design, build, and test enough prototypes to quickly move biotechnology forward,” said O’Malley. The grant will facilitate the acquisition of state-of-the-art robotic assembly and analytical tools to eliminate this bottleneck and allow the foundation for the UCSB BioFoundry. 

Speed is one of many benefits when it comes to automation. “When you have robots that don’t sleep and don’t make mistakes, you can do extremely precise research at unprecedented scales,” stated Max Wilson, an assistant professor of molecular, cellular and development biology. 

The UCSB BioFoundry will house custom-designed equipment tailored to the university's life science research needs, culminating in discussions with more than 40 principal investigators on campus. Two distinct systems will handle mammalian cells and microbial cells, offering versatile applications in biomedical and environmental domains. The automated systems will pave the way for advanced research in areas such as medical advancements, cell biology, environmental sustainability, and biomanufacturing.

“These systems will allow us to pursue a wide range of research in areas where we have a significant amount of expertise,” explained O’Malley. “We will have a robot used mostly to answer medical and cell biology questions and develop new biomedical technologies, and another one to accelerate knowledge and technology that will aid our goals related to the environment, sustainability, and biomanufacturing. That really encompasses the main pillars of strength in our Bioengineering Department, which is unique from other departments that focus solely on the medical space.”

Housed in two separate locations on campus to avoid cross-contamination, each system comprises integrated DNA foundry capabilities, colony picking and sorting, plate readers, mass spectrometry, and high-speed imaging. The automated systems are poised to execute workflows without human intervention, relieving researchers of tedious tasks to enable more focus on data analysis and experimental design. “This gives us the kind of experimental firepower of a mid-size biotechnology or pharmaceutical company, but in such a way that we can be flexible in pursuing answers to many different problems,” said Wilson.

Wilson’s research group aims to enhance the understanding of complex cellular decisions, utilizing synthetic biology tools to engineer cells for biomedical purposes. “ We will be able to use the new equipment to engineer photo-responsive proteins that we use to communicate with cells at an unprecedented scale,” he explained. “We should get proteins that are much more efficient and be able to control extremely relevant processes that we are interested in engineering.”

Beyond scientific advancements, O'Malley and Wilson emphasized the educational benefits of the new facilities. Students will gain hands-on experience with automation, enhancing their appeal to biotechnology and bio-pharma recruiters in the competitive job market.

The grant also supports hiring PhD-level project scientists to manage user facilities and train students. The equipment is slated for readiness in the second half of 2024, hoping to foster interdisciplinary collaboration across campus, including researchers in biological engineering, earth science, chemistry, ecology, and marine biology.

“This instrumentation will make a transformational impact and unite everyone on campus who works on cells. It enables researchers to think in a new dimension, to design and execute large-scale experiments that push our limits of scientific understanding and develop technology in ways that were not possible before,” said O’Malley. “The life sciences have not had infrastructure that unites everybody on this scale, similar to how the Materials Research Laboratory exists for the materials community. This also provides a big feather in the cap of the new Bioengineering Department.”

As UCSB continues to explore additional funding opportunities, the BioFoundry presents an exciting opportunity to discover the value of automation in synthetic biology for a future of high-quality, streamlined research.