The BioPACIFIC MIP (BioPolymers, Automated Cellular Infrastructure, Flow, and Integrated Chemistry: Materials Innovation Platform), located at the University of California's (UC) Santa Barbara and Los Angeles campuses, is a research platform dedicated to exploiting yeast, fungi, and bacteria as biological factories to generate building blocks in order to make polymeric materials (plastics) with superior properties to existing materials. Robotic automation is used to quickly prepare the bio-derived polymer materials, these materials are incorporated into higher order structures using advanced 3D printers, and cutting-edge characterization tools are used to determine how structure and organization at the atomic and molecular level affect materials properties. Dedicated and broadly accessible databases record properties and processing information from these tools, which are integrated with computer modeling and machine learning to help close the design loop and optimize these plastics derived from living organisms, in alignment with the methodology of the Materials Genome Initiative. Together these state-of-the-art tools in a national user facility, combined with world-class services, allow users and in-house researchers to accelerate the discovery and development of new materials with performances exceeding those of materials produced through traditional petrochemical-based methods. The BioPACIFIC MIP is a scientific ecosystem with researchers coming from materials science, biology, chemistry, and engineering, where researchers share tools, samples, data, software, and know-how for the collective advancement of science and technology. Through in-person interaction with expert staff and at an annual technical workshop, the BioPACIFIC MIP also educates and trains researchers, especially facility users and potential users, in automated synthetic biology, chemical synthesis, and advanced biomaterials characterization, while promoting diversity and inclusion at all organizational levels and in all aspects of operation.
The discovery and development of advanced biomaterials with novel properties is the central focus of the BioPACIFIC MIP. This goal is realized through tight integration of synthesis, and physiochemical characterization of tactic, sequence-controlled, or stimuli-responsive polymers constructed from libraries of chiral, regioselective, and functional bio-sourced monomers in a feedback loop with simulation. The automated, high-throughput Living Bioreactor Platform at UC Los Angeles produces monomers with stereospecific functional groups from yeast, fungi, and bacteria that feed into a Materials Genome Initiative-based loop of hierarchical computation, automated polymerization, and flow chemistry at UC Santa Barbara. Cutting-edge materials characterization tools include a cryogenic microcrystal electron diffraction system that enables rapid determination of the structures of the building blocks and polymers in both two and three dimensions as well as x-ray scattering and high-throughput micro-rheology. Integrated state-of-the-art simulation tools are used to predict the properties of synthesized materials and systematically explore the design landscape of new chiral, regioselective, and functional bio-sourced monomers. Taken together, the BioPACIFIC MIP provides in-house researchers and facility users the unique opportunity to determine structure-property relationships that serve to guide molecular-level engineering and chemical formulation toward specific materials targets and provides insight into how natural, bio-based materials assemble and function.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
