GIFS’ Engineering Biology Platform combines biology, lab automation, and machine learning to achieve a new scale of research and product development.
Our platform is dedicated to supporting agriculture and agri-food research, making it the only one of its kind in Canada.
Our technology, expertise, and high-throughput, automated workflows also support industry, as well as public and private researchers, in other disciplines, including health, natural, and environmental sciences.
Services
GIFS’ Engineering Biology Platform provides researchers with a single-source, integrated solution for high-throughput measurements that enhance the entire design, test, build, and learn cycle.
Strain Engineering
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- DNA assembly: PCR fragments, plasmids, gene clusters, and synthetic chromosomes.
- Verifying successful assembly: Colony PCR, electrophoresis, and dye-based assays.
- Biochemical pathway domestication.
Cell Growth and Phenotyping
- Transformation, plating, colony picking (2,400 colonies/hour), culturing, passaging, growth-based analysis, and fluorescence-based analysis.
Coming soon:
- Precision fermentation: Microlitre to litre scale microbial growth with benchtop fermentation capacity (4x 0.4-1.8L parallel bioreactor systems and 2x 5-10L bioreactors).
Proteomics and Metabolomics
Coming soon:
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- High-throughput sample prep and injection, HPLC, LC-MS (Quadrupole Time-of-Flight (QTOF), and Triple Quadrupole (TQ) systems).
- Extraction from plants, microbes, and environmental samples.
Applications
Our platform supports the development — and scaled production — of industrially relevant microbes, DNA, proteins, and peptides, as well as other innovations advancing research and sustainable food production.
Protein Engineering and Design
Natural Product Development
Precision Fermentation
Interested in Collaborating on an Idea or Project?
“Engineering biology, also known as synthetic biology, is a maturing field, so it’s not sci-fi, but the scale that we can achieve is incredible. Having all of this equipment under one roof is something that is really special.”
“Get used to thinking at scales of thousands, millions, and billions of evolving systems. We want to enable researchers to ask questions that you wouldn’t normally be able to answer.”