Pico-Mine® – Accelerating synthetic and metabolic workflows at Biosyntia
Biosyntia is an industrial biotech company, focusing especially on developing more natural and sustainable processes for producing active ingredients used in beauty and nutrition such as vitamins and antioxidants. Investing in the right ultra-high-throughput technology is key to reaching their goal of European bio-based production of greener and more sustainable nutritional ingredients. By integrating the Pico-Mine® platform, Biosyntia are now exploring genetic diversity at unprecedented speed, identifying the one in a million cells from large mutant libraries, that show improved production phenotypes.
Switching to picodroplet-based technologies
Ultra-high-throughput droplet-based screening had long been on Biosyntia’s radar for its immense potential in cell factory development and Biosyntia’s synergistic expertise in biosensor development. Having explored various companies over several years to help Biosyntia bring this technology in-house, a partnership was born with Sphere Bio, with their groundbreaking platform Pico-Mine®. Designed to support earlier stage research using picodroplet technology, Pico-Mine®, provides:
- Semi-automated platform capabilities
- Ultra-flexibility for workflows and assays to help find valuable and rare biological variants among large cell populations
- Radically increased throughput
- Reduced cost across a wide range of applications helping save on resources
“We are truly excited about having the droplet technology in-house to substantially accelerate the improvement of strains for precision fermentation of nutritional ingredients. From what I have already seen, I expect to see significant impact across a wider portfolio of projects.”
Hans Genee
CSO and Co-Founder, Biosyntia
Advancing precision fermentation with droplet-based screening
One of Biosyntia’s unique technologies for developing state-of-the-art cell factories for precision fermentation is the use of genetically encoded biosensors. However, uses of traditional tools, such as flow cytometry, are based on sensing internal product concentrations only. Pico-Mine® droplet-based screening allows miniaturization of a fermentation process to the nano-liter scale with direct sensing of extracellular product concentrations and easy single cell isolation of improved producing strains.
Advancing precision fermentation with droplet-based screening
Within the first months of using Pico-Mine®, with Biosyntia’s proprietary B7 biosensor, Biosyntia has already been able to identify improved genetic variants of their already world-leading B7 production strain which are currently in the process to being upscaled for precision fermentation of sustainable and natural B7 vitamin (Bio-B7). By integrating Pico-Mine®, Biosyntia are exploring genetic diversity at unprecedented speed, identifying the one in a million cells from large mutant libraries, that show improved production phenotypes.
Figure 1 Biosyntia’s updated workflow integrating Pico-Mine®, with their proprietary B7 biosensor has enabled them to rapidly identify improved genetic variants of their already world-leading B7 production strain.
“Droplet screening is a game-changer and with Pico-Mine® from Sphere Bio in
our lab, we are now able to test 1000-fold more strains within the same timeframe
and with a fraction of the resources. We are already seeing super exciting results
and expect many more to come.”
David Lennox-Hvenekilde
Sr. Scientist and Droplet Screening Lead, Biosyntia
Effortless integration for rapid single-cell discovery
Pico-Mine® offers droplet microfluidic technology in an easy-to-use platform, allowing researchers with no experience in microfluidics to run experiments in just a matter of weeks therefore making it possible for scientists to quickly integrate the platform into their workflows and projects. In addition to its ease of use, due to it’s semi-automated design, there are many different experiments researchers can do with the setup to expand research capabilities and stay at the forefront of single-cell research and implement effectively.
Scaling innovation for sustainable bio-based production
Additionally, Pico-Mine® is allowing Biosyntia to develop novel industrially relevant cell factories with next steps to scale this technology to a wide array of further molecules, not limited to B-vitamins.
Droplet-based ultra-high-throughput screening will play a cornerstone role in Biosyntia’s R&D strategy going forward to aid in reaching their goals of European bio-based production of greener and more sustainable nutritional ingredients.
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