TRACE (Tracking and Recording Accurate Cellular Engineering): Ensuring Provenance in ML-Driven Yeast Optimization

Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a young and exciting field that combines many different scientific disciplines to redesign organisms for useful purposes by engineering them to perform new functions. SynBio has potential to revolutionise many existing industries and resolve crises in agriculture, energy and healthcare.

There is no surprise that substantial funding has been dedicated to this field from both the UK government and commercial investors. With a rapid expansion in the Synbio industry, there is an ever increasing need for the protection of UK commercial biological assets. The traditional IP and asset protection strategies such as patenting and T&C in contracts are not suitable for supporting the agile commercialisation of SynBio generated biological assets.

This leaves highly valuable assets vulnerable for extended periods of time, potentially delaying and complicating the scaling-up process and inhibiting commercialisation. Simultaneously, adoption of genetically engineered assets faces public distrust due to the lack of traceability and transparency.

In this project GitLife Biotech Ltd, a spinout from Newcastle University and Colorifix Ltd, a SME based at Norwich Research Park, Norwich have come together to address these issues by putting forward a novel and innovative solution for faster scale-out and commercialisation of Engineering Biology innovations.

GitLife Biotech Ltd has developed a biosecurity system for engineered microorganisms. They insert a unique DNA sequence in the genome of organisms that acts as an identifying factor. This unique DNA sequence is recorded along with all the information regarding the engineering process and the rightful owners of that particular strain on their cloud-based digital platform.

As the DNA sequence is heritable and unique to a single owner entity, the biological asset can always traced back to their rightful owner. Colorifix is a sustainable tech. SynBio company that harnesses genetic engineering and bioinformatics to engineer microbes to produce coloured pigments that can dye fabrics.

The dyes themselves are sustainable and unlike current dyeing processes no toxic chemicals are necessary in addition to reduction of water usage significantly. In this project, GitLife will incorporate their biosecurity toolkit in five of Colorifix’s small molecule producing strains . GitLife will demonstrate that these strains will remain traceable to Colorifix and Colorifix is able to share, sell and scale-out these strains without endangering their revenue due to their strains being copied and exploited by bad actors.