Semiautomated Production of Cell-Free Biosensors
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: diagnostic technologies for the detection of chemical compounds, such as toxins and human health biomarkers. They have several advantages over conventional laboratory-based diagnostic approaches, including the ability to be assembled, freeze-dried, distributed, and then used at the point of need. This makes them an attractive platform for cheap and rapid chemical detection across the globe. Though promising, a major challenge is scaling up biosensor manufacturing to meet the needs of their multiple uses. Currently, cell-free biosensor assembly during lab-scale development is mostly performed manually by the operator, leading to quality control and performance variability issues. Here we explore the use of liquid-handling robotics to manufacture cell-free biosensor reactions. We compare both manual and semiautomated reaction assembly approaches using the Opentrons OT-2 liquid handling platform on two different cell-free gene expression assay systems that constitutively produce colorimetric (LacZ) or fluorescent (GFP) signals. We test the designed protocol by constructing an entire 384-well plate of fluoride-sensing cell-free biosensors and demonstrate that they perform close to expected detection outcomes.
Source: ACS Synthetic Biology
Authors: Dylan M. Brown, Daniel A. Phillips, David C. Garcia, Anibal Arce, Tyler Lucci, John P. Davies, Jacob T. Mangini, Katherine A. Rhea, Casey B. Bernhards, John R. Biondo, Steven M. Blum, Stephanie D. Cole, Jennifer A. Lee, Marilyn S. Lee, Nathan D. McDonald, Brenda Wang, Dale L. Perdue, Xavier S. Bower, Walter Thavarajah, Ashty S. Karim, Matthew W. Lux, Michael C. Jewett, Aleksandr E. Miklos, Julius B. Lucks
Language: English
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4408347663