Darpa's "Living Foundries" program is looking to "transform biology into an engineering practice." Photo: VA

The military-industrial complex just got a little bit livelier. Quite literally.

Thats because Darpa, the Pentagons far-out research arm, has kicked off a program designed to take the conventions of manufacturing and apply them to living cells. Think of it like an assembly line, but one that would churn out modified biological matter man-made organisms instead of cars or computer parts.

The program, called Living Foundries, was firstannounced by the agency last year. Now, Darpas handed outseven research awardsworth $15.5 million to six different companies and institutions. Among them are several Darpa favorites, including the University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of Technology. Two contracts were also issued to the J. Craig Venter Institute. Dr. Venter is something of a biology superstar: He was among the first scientists to sequence a human genome, and his institute was, in 2010, the first to create a cell withentirely synthetic genome.

Living Foundries aspires to turn the slow, messy process of genetic engineering into a streamlined and standardized one. Of course, the field is already a burgeoning one: Scientists have tweaked cells in order to developrenewable petroleumandspider silkthats tough as steel. And a host of companies areinvestigatingthe pharmaceutical and agricultural promise lurking with some tinkering, of course inside living cells.

But those breakthroughs, while exciting, have also been time-consuming and expensive.As Darpa notes, even the most cutting-edge synthetic biology projects often take 7+ years and tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to complete. Venters synthetic cell project, for example,costan estimated $40 million.

Synthetic biology, as Darpa notes, has the potential to yield new materials, novel capabilities, fuel and medicines everything from fuels to solar cells to vaccines could be produced by engineering different living cells. But the agency isnt content to wait seven years for each new innovation. In fact, they want the capability for on-demand production of whatever bio-product suits the militarys immediate needs.

To do it, Darpa will need to revamp the process of bio-engineering from the initial design of a new material, to its construction, to its subsequent efficacy evaluation. The starting point, and one that agency-funded researchers will have to create, is a library of modular genetic parts: Standardized biological units that can be assembled in different ways like LEGO to create different materials.

Once that library is created, the agency wants researchers to come up with a set of parts, regulators, devices and circuits that can reliably yield various genetic systems. After that, theyll also need test platforms to quickly evaluate new bio-materials. Think of it as a biological assembly line: Products are designed, pieced together using standardized tools and techniques, and then tested for efficacy.

The process, once established, ought to massively accelerate the pace of bio-engineering and cut costs. The agencys asking researchers to compress the biological design-build-test cycle by at least 10X in both time and cost, while also increasing the complexity of systems that can be designed and executed.

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Darpa, Venter Launch Assembly Line for Genetic Engineering