Hardware, Software, and Wetware Codesign Environment for Synthetic Biology
Synthetic biology is the process of forward engineering living systems. These systems can be used to produce biobased materials, agriculture, medicine, and energy. One approach to designing these systems is to employ techniques from the design of embedded electronics. These techniques include abstra...
Saved in:
| Published in: | Biodesign research Vol. 2022; p. 9794510 |
|---|---|
| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
AAAS
2022
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) |
| Subjects: | |
| ISSN: | 2693-1257, 2693-1257 |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | Synthetic biology is the process of forward engineering living systems. These systems can be used to produce biobased materials, agriculture, medicine, and energy. One approach to designing these systems is to employ techniques from the design of embedded electronics. These techniques include abstraction, standards, modularity, automated design, and formal semantic models of computation. Together, these elements form the foundation of "biodesign automation," where software, robotics, and microfluidic devices combine to create exciting biological systems of the future. This paper describes a "hardware, software, wetware" codesign vision where software tools can be made to act as "genetic compilers" that transform high-level specifications into engineered "genetic circuits" (wetware). This is followed by a process where automation equipment, well-defined experimental workflows, and microfluidic devices are explicitly designed to house, execute, and test these circuits (hardware). These systems can be used as either massively parallel experimental platforms or distributed bioremediation and biosensing devices. Next, scheduling and control algorithms (software) manage these systems' actual execution and data analysis tasks. A distinguishing feature of this approach is how all three of these aspects (hardware, software, and wetware) may be derived from the same basic specification in parallel and generated to fulfill specific cost, performance, and structural requirements.Synthetic biology is the process of forward engineering living systems. These systems can be used to produce biobased materials, agriculture, medicine, and energy. One approach to designing these systems is to employ techniques from the design of embedded electronics. These techniques include abstraction, standards, modularity, automated design, and formal semantic models of computation. Together, these elements form the foundation of "biodesign automation," where software, robotics, and microfluidic devices combine to create exciting biological systems of the future. This paper describes a "hardware, software, wetware" codesign vision where software tools can be made to act as "genetic compilers" that transform high-level specifications into engineered "genetic circuits" (wetware). This is followed by a process where automation equipment, well-defined experimental workflows, and microfluidic devices are explicitly designed to house, execute, and test these circuits (hardware). These systems can be used as either massively parallel experimental platforms or distributed bioremediation and biosensing devices. Next, scheduling and control algorithms (software) manage these systems' actual execution and data analysis tasks. A distinguishing feature of this approach is how all three of these aspects (hardware, software, and wetware) may be derived from the same basic specification in parallel and generated to fulfill specific cost, performance, and structural requirements. |
|---|---|
| Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 ObjectType-Review-3 content type line 23 S.M.D.O declares that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article. D.D. is a cofounder of Asimov, Lattice Automation, and BioSens8. These are companies that use synthetic biology, create biodesign software, and design biosensors. |
| ISSN: | 2693-1257 2693-1257 |
| DOI: | 10.34133/2022/9794510 |