End-to-end automated microfluidic platform for synthetic biology: from design to functional analysis.

Background: Synthetic biology aims to engineer biological systems for desired behaviors. The construction of these systems can be complex, often requiring genetic reprogramming, extensive de novo DNA synthesis, and functional screening.

Results: Herein, we present a programmable, multipurpose microfluidic platform and associated software and apply the platform to major steps of the synthetic biology research cycle: design, construction, testing, and analysis.

PR-PR: cross-platform laboratory automation system.

To enable protocol standardization, sharing, and efficient implementation across laboratory automation platforms, we have further developed the PR-PR open-source high-level biology-friendly robot programming language as a cross-platform laboratory automation system. Beyond liquid-handling robotics, PR-PR now supports microfluidic and microscopy platforms, as well as protocol translation into human languages, such as English. While the same set of basic PR-PR commands and features are available for each supported platform, the underlying optimization and translation modules vary from platform to platform.

Cloud-enabled microscopy and droplet microfluidic platform for specific detection of Escherichia coli in water.

We report an all-in-one platform - ScanDrop - for the rapid and specific capture, detection, and identification of bacteria in drinking water. The ScanDrop platform integrates droplet microfluidics, a portable imaging system, and cloud-based control software and data storage. The cloud-based control software and data storage enables robotic image acquisition, remote image processing, and rapid data sharing.

PaR-PaR laboratory automation platform.

Labor-intensive multistep biological tasks, such as the construction and cloning of DNA molecules, are prime candidates for laboratory automation. Flexible and biology-friendly operation of robotic equipment is key to its successful integration in biological laboratories, and the efforts required to operate a robot must be much smaller than the alternative manual lab work. To achieve these goals, a simple high-level biology-friendly robot programming language is needed.