The project SMARTBIOFAB will develop and apply methods and tools for designing, building and testing genetic synthetic circuits for optimal bioproduction of metabolites of interest, with an emphasis on the use of machine learning-based modelling, design, optimization and feedback regulation. The project is carried out in collaboration with I2SysBio (UV/CSIC).

SMARTBIOFAB will progress beyond the state-of-the-art in the production of metabolites of interest in microbial cell factories by establishing for the first time an atlas of the reachable, detectable and regulable design spaces for such systems and then providing the required tools for the design, implementation, assembly and analysis of regulated production systems based on synthetic dynamic feedback regulation circuits. In particular, SMARTBIOFAB will consider the full set of modular transformations applied to known metabolites through an iterative procedure, known as retrobiosynthesis algorithm, in order to identify all pairs of production+biosensor circuits that can be implemented in a microbial cell factory. SMARTBIOFAB will validate its methods and tools using relevant case studies, including the production of flavonoids of industrial interest using the bacterial host E. coli.