Quantitative Cell Biology

Biological, chemical and physical contaminants continue to play a significant role in causing human illness and death. While most food supply companies are becoming slowly aware of the breadth of system responsibilities they must assume in terms of preventing food safety problems, many are ineffective due to their lack of how contaminants flow through the supply chain and how to establish procedures to stop such flows from entering or exiting their own doors.

DNA assembly is commonly performed in the build step of the design-build-test-learn cycle at the core of synthetic biology. In many assembly workflows, DNA is assembled into gene fragments, which are then assembled into larger constructs, often plasmids.

Precise identification and localization of molecules and organelles on the sub-cellular level are essential for a comprehensive understanding of key processes within biological samples. To achieve this, researchers utilize advanced microscopy techniques such as super-resolution microscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). These techniques are increasingly being employed in succession on the same sample, in order to correlate specifically labeled fluorescent molecules imaged with light microscopy to ultrastructural features at the TEM level. However, these techniques are limited in their ability to determine the elemental composition of biological samples at the ultrastructural level.

Potency assays are an essential aspect of analyses of biotherapeutics, including CAR-T therapeutics. The potency assay format that will be used as a release assay for CTM (in a QC environment) needs to be as accurate, precise and robust as possible.