The Estonian Biofoundry initiative, funded by the DigiBio project under the Widespread Teaming for Excellence programme, will ensure the development and implementation of cell-based and cell-free bioengineering design platforms, incorporating digitalized high-throughput semi-automated genome and protein engineering as well as screening and quantification in the Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL) workflow. The Biofoundry will consolidate the expertise and equipment at the UT and TUT to form a unified Estonian Biofoundry that will act in a triangle partnership with Metrosert AS, a newly established Estonian Applied Research Centre (RUK – Rakendusuuringute Keskus; in Estonian) Pilot Plant for bioprocess scale-up.
The Biofoundry infrastructure provides high-level technical support for academia, industry, and start-ups. We will implement microbial and mammalian cell engineering workflows, cell-free pathway optimization workflows, and protein engineering and production optimization workflows. Our Teaming partner, the Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Biosustainability at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Biosustain), will guide us to establish the Integrated Informatics Platform connected to the wet lab workflows as an innovative DBTL cycle. This model has been successfully tested at DTU and will be implemented in Estonia during the first two years of the DigiBio project. The Estonian Biofoundry recently became a member of the Global Biofoundry Alliance.