Versioning Biological Cells for Trustworthy Cell Engineering

Tellechea-Luzardo, Jonathan; Hobbs, Leanne; Velázquez, Elena; Pelechova, Lenka; Woods, Simon; de Lorenzo, Victor; Krasnogor, Natalio

“Full-stack” biotechnology platforms for cell line (re)programming are on the horizon, due mostly to (a) advances in gene synthesis and editing techniques as well as (b) the growing integration with informatics, the internet of things and automation. These emerging platforms will accelerate the production and consumption of biological products. Hence, transparency, traceability and -ultimately-trustworthiness is required -from cradle to grave- for engineered cell lines and their engineering processes. We report here the first version control system for cell engineering that integrates a new cloud-based version control software for cell lines’ digital footprint with molecular barcoding of living samples. We argue that version control for cell engineering marks a significant step towards more open, reproducible, easier to trace and share, and more trustworthy engineering biology. One Sentence Summary We demonstrate a transparent and open way of engineering and sharing cell lines.