Synthetic Biology:BioBricks/Standardization

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Introduction

Standardization of components and processes has led to major advances in mature engineering disciplines. From screw threads to British Standards to unit operations, engineering has benefited from doing things in a standard way. The engineering of biological systems will also benefit from the development and implementation of standard components and practices. This page is intended to aggregate some of the different standards that the Synthetic Biology Working Group is trying to develop.

There have been some initial attempts to brainstorm what form those standards might take. It is likely that we will need several classes of standards and that each class of standards which have different versions to meet different needs.

Standards of practice

• Design: the way(s) in which systems are designed from BioBrick parts.
  • See Registry of Standard Biological Parts for standard biological parts.
  • See Standard abstraction framework for engineered biological systems for a discussion on how cope with the design of increasingly complex biological systems.

• Fabrication: the way(s) in which BioBricks are physically constructed and assembled together.
  • See Part fabrication for information on construction of new biological parts.
  • See BioBricks construction tutorial, 3A assembly or Silver lab assembly strategy for information on assembly of existing biological parts.
  • See Vectors for information on the vectors in which BioBricks reside.

• Documentation: the way(s) in which BioBricks are documented.
  • See Barcodes for information on signing BioBricks parts.
  • See Device datasheet example for a working example of documenting a BioBrick.
  • See Semantic web ontology for an ontology for biological parts.

• Characterization: the way(s) in which the behavior of BioBricks are measured.
  • See Standard methods for part characterization for some preliminary notes on parts characterization.
  • See Standardized GFP quantification for notes on making absolute molecule number measurements.

• Operation: the conditions under which systems from BioBricks are operated.
  • See Standard vectors for information on the vectors in which BioBricks reside.
  • See Standard cellular chassis for notes on constructing a novel strain in which all BioBricks would operate.
  • See Standard culture media for information on a culture media in which all constructs would operate.

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