Parts to Pathways: an automated assembly approach to pathway optimisation

Arturo Casini, Marko Storch, Ben Mackrow, Tom Ellis, Geoff S. Baldwin*

Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ, UK
*To whom correspondence should be addressed:
g.baldwin@imperial.ac.uk

ABSTRACT

DNA assembly is one of the key foundation technologies in synthetic biology. While emerging technologies in DNA synthesis are beginning to address this at scale, it remains a challenge to assemble from parts to pathways in a fast, accurate and accessible manner. We have devised a new Biopart Assembly Standard for Idempotent Cloning (BASIC) that uses computationally derived orthogonal linkers to direct DNA assembly in a flexible format. Here we demonstrate that it can be used in both manual and automated assembly of biological pathways and can encompass promoter tuning, RBS tuning and protein fusions.