We Accidentally Built a Synthetic Cell Factory
The b.next team details their transition from academic research to industrial manufacturing of 'Cytosol,' a core material for synthetic cell production. They overcame supply chain barriers by creating an open-source, interoperable infrastructure for the synthetic biology community.
Why it matters
It highlights the shift toward open-source industrial infrastructure in biotechnology, which is essential for scaling synthetic cell research.
We started b.next as a few academics looking to solve the problem of interoperability and integration in synthetic cell research, and help our community realize the potential of synthetic cells. Over the last few years, we've been hard at work on this with Nucleus. But that alone isn't enough: synthetic cells can only go so far without a dedicated physical supply chain. We took on the challenge and now operate a manufacturing plant building Cytosol—the core materials needed to build cells—made to Nucleus open specifications. We recently shipped our 100th kit. Building industrial-grade infrastructure wasn’t necessarily what we expected would be needed when we set out, but it's a critical next step for synthetic cells to grow from an academic effort to solving global-scale problems. This post shares that journey.
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