Ultra-high-throughput droplet-based screening had long been on Biosyntia’s radar for its immense potential in cell factory development and Biosyntia’s synergistic expertise in biosensor development. Having explored various companies over several years to help Biosyntia bring this technology in-house, a partnership was born with Sphere Fluidics, with their groundbreaking platform Pico-Mine®. Designed to support earlier stage research using picodroplet technology, Pico-Mine®, provides:

• Semi-automated platform capabilities
• Ultra-flexibility for workflows and assays to help find valuable and rare biological variants among large cell populations
•  Radically increased throughput
•  Reduced cost across a wide range of applications helping save on resources

One of Biosyntia’s unique technologies for developing state-of-the-art cell factories for precision fermentation is the use of genetically encoded biosensors. However, uses of traditional tools, such as flow cytometry, are based on sensing internal product concentrations only. Pico-Mine® droplet-based screening allows miniaturization of a fermentation process to the nano-liter scale with direct sensing of extracellular product concentrations and easy single cell isolation of improved producing strains.

Within the first months of using Pico-Mine®, with Biosyntia’s proprietary B7 biosensor, Biosyntia has already been able to identify improved genetic variants of their already world-leading B7 production strain which are  currently in the process to being upscaled for precision fermentation of sustainable and natural B7 vitamin (Bio-B7). By integrating Pico-Mine®, Biosyntia are exploring genetic diversity at unprecedented speed, identifying the one in a million cells from large mutant libraries, that show improved production phenotypes.

Pico-Mine® offers droplet microfluidic technology in an easy-to-use platform, allowing researchers with no experience in microfluidics to run experiments in just a matter of weeks therefore making it possible for scientists to quickly integrate the platform into their workflows and projects. In addition to its ease of use, due to it’s semi-automated design, there are many different  experiments researchers can do with the setup to expand research capabilities and stay at the forefront of single-cell research and implement effectively. Additionally, Pico-Mine® is allowing Biosyntia to develop novel industrially relevant cell factories with next steps to scale this technology to a wide array of further molecules, not limited to B-vitamins. Droplet-based ultra-high-throughput screening will play a cornerstone role in Biosyntia’s R&D strategy going forward to aid in reaching their goals of European  bio-based production of greener and more sustainable nutritional ingredients.

Figure 1 Biosyntia’s updated workflow integrating Pico-Mine®, with their proprietary B7 biosensor has enabled them to rapidly identify improved genetic variants of their already world-leading B7 production strain.

Flexible but simple

Pico-Mine® lets you mix and match functions to build the workflow you need for every project. It is also simple to use without needing microfluidics expertise so you can focus on your science.

High-throughput, low cost

Picodroplet technology allows both cell-by cell assessment and rapid, low stress processing of cells – all at tiny volumes. You get the best of all worlds – precise measurements of large libraries in hours at low cost.

Build Complex workflows

Pico-Mine® biochips allow a wide range of functions to be combined to execute the most complex workflows. And we can provide custom biochips too if you need something slightly different.