Synthace\u2019s Antha software<\/a> allows the user to replace subjective instructions like \u201cshake a test tube vigorously\u201d with digital language that isn\u2019t open to misinterpretation and that lab robots can execute. Building on top of Azure IoT, Antha is a high-level language for describing biological experiments that allows an array of lab machines made by different manufacturers to run them, much like printer drivers allow any make or model of printer to print PDF documents.<\/p>\n That ability to run experiments exactly the same way each time gives users confidence that the results they\u2019re seeing are meaningful, and not just a fluke in the way the experiment happened to be set up that day.<\/p>\n Synthace\u2019s system \u2014 which can handle experiments that simultaneously test dozens of different parameters or genetic constructs rather than one or two at a time \u2014 speeds up the research process exponentially. Combined with machine learning capabilities, it also gives customers the ability to pose and learn from much more sophisticated lines of inquiry.<\/p>\n \u201cThe near infinite power of biology can only be unlocked by bringing software abstraction and automation to biological R&D and manufacturing, and by enabling biologists to build atop their collective work. That is what the Antha platform does successfully,\u201d said Tim Fell, Synthace chief executive officer.<\/p>\n The Station B platform will be tested first in the lab of Bonnie Bassler<\/a>, chair of Princeton\u2019s Department of Molecular Biology, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, who studies how bacteria wield outsized power by acting as collectives. The Princeton team includes Bassler\u2019s longtime collaborator Ned Wingreen<\/a>, a physicist and professor in Princeton\u2019s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.<\/p>\n \u201cHistorically we\u2019ve thought of bacteria as only having harmful behaviors, like infecting us and causing disease, but more recently scientists have discovered the microbiome, a rather magical bacterial community that lives in and on us and that keeps us alive,\u201d Bassler said. \u201cWhat my lab has always wondered about is how do bacteria manage to either kill us or keep us alive? They\u2019re so tiny.\u201d<\/p>\n Bassler discovered the widespread use of a phenomenon called quorum sensing in the bacterial world. It\u2019s a form of molecular communication that bacteria use to determine when their numbers have reached a critical mass. When they reach the \u201cquorum,\u201d together they trigger behaviors that are only successful when bacteria act as a coordinated group \u2014 such as unleashing virulent diseases.<\/p>\n In a proof-of-concept pilot, the team will deploy the Station B platform to investigate how cholera bacteria use quorum sensing to form biofilms, thin layers of bacteria that grow on almost all surfaces. Bacteria living in biofilm communities can be 1000 times more resistant to antibiotics than non-biofilm bacteria.<\/p>\n Princeton researchers will use the Station B platform and Synthace\u2019s lab automation tools to construct and test different versions of two proteins that are key to biofilm formation \u2014 which are also genetically programmed to light up. The light allows the scientists to see and measure how much of each protein is produced under many different conditions and in different regions of the biofilm.<\/p>\n Bassler compares the working microbiologists in her lab to master craftspeople, creating elegant and complicated genetic constructs to produce a desired result. But that artisanal process yields only a few prospects at a time and doesn\u2019t allow the team to massively attack the problem.<\/p>\n The Station B platform will be able to build and test dozens of engineered proteins at once \u2014 in whatever combinations a researcher can dream up and type into the system for a liquid handling robot to produce. The platform will then help the scientists learn which of the protein constructs behave most like the natural proteins and yield an accurate picture of how biofilm cells organize, Bassler said.<\/p>\n The goal is to build on that basic understanding and find an Achilles heel that might weaken virulent biofilms or increase their sensitivity to antibiotics.<\/p>\n \u201cThe platform will allow us to ask more questions, get more results and do more experiments than a graduate student or postdoc, no matter how clever, can do today. So, it gets us to the winning genetic constructs faster,\u201d Bassler said.<\/p>\n Equally important, the platform will also collect and help analyze data from every single lab experiment \u2014 including ones that fail, Bassler said. By necessity, scientists have to pursue their most fruitful lines of inquiry, but that can leave an untapped trove of information about why something didn\u2019t succeed.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this extra information can help us discover the underlying patterns in what works and what doesn\u2019t work and why, that would be a transformative leap for us,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The value of deploying the Station B platform in Bassler\u2019s lab is that those researchers have already built an extensive inventory of genetic components, chemical mixtures and models in the years that they\u2019ve been studying bacteria like cholera.<\/p>\n If the team can begin to uncover the rules and principles that govern those systems, Wingreen said, they may be able to program them in transferrable ways. That could potentially enable a doctor who studies cancer or an engineer working on low-carbon fuels to imagine a genetic construct that they\u2019d love to test and get an exact blueprint for assembling it \u2014 without spending years at a lab bench.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom my perspective, this could have a huge reach,\u201d Wingreen said. \u201cJust as the tech sector was democratized by software that lets you ask for what you want in a microchip design and have someone make it, we need that same revolution in biology.\u201d<\/p>\n Top image: Breech Odu works in an Oxford Biomedica lab, where the Station B platform will be deployed to accelerate discovery and manufacturing of gene and cell therapies. Photo by Jonathan Banks.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Sarah-Jane](\"http:\/\/www.sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/with-lessons-learned-from-computers-a-new-platform-could-help-boost-production-of-lifesaving-biological-therapies.jpg\")
\u2019This could have huge reach\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n