Background 

Access to reagents and consumables in the biotechnology and synthetic biology fields can be a real challenge for some labs around the world. Enzymes in particular require cold-chain shipping and can take weeks to months to be delivered to parts of Africa, Latin America and Asia. Jenny Molloy, group leader of the Open Bioeconomy Lab in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, realised that this challenge came up repeatedly from colleagues at a number of events she attended on open hardware for science. “It was clear that the equipment was one part of the problem. But if you’ve got the equipment, you still need to keep stocking it with reagents and consumables.” As a result, in 2018 Molloy started her Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship to create an open source toolkit for reagent production, aiming to make biotechnology research more accessible in low- and middle-income countries. 

Function

Open Enzyme Collection consists of DNA coding for essential enzymes commonly used in techniques involving reading and editing DNA constructs. The kit enables researchers who encounter challenges to access resources to have the tools to express their
own enzymes.  

Development process

The process started with brainstorming with a number of collaborators, around which enzymes and parts should be included in the collection. The next step was to identify which of those were already off-patent. The Open Enzyme team then made some changes to the digital DNA code to ensure successful expression in the lab workhorse bacteria Escherichia coli, and submitted the sequences to the project Free Genes at Stanford University where they were de novo synthesised. Open Enzyme is an ever-growing collection, Molloy said, “During the pandemic we designed the research in diagnostics collection to help groups developing new COVID tests, added different types of proteins and we’re currently extending it again through an open consultation process.” 

Target user

Researchers in the molecular biology field located in low- and middle-income countries. Also, whoever has challenges in accessing enzymes for their molecular biology research, education or innovation activities, for whom it would help to have the protein expression tools to produce their own enzymes.

Comparison to other technologies

The key factor that differentiates Open Enzyme Collection from available alternatives is the open source aspect, and curation of the “most useful” DNA in one single toolkit. Although there is a cost for the maintenance of the plasmids and delivery, recipients then have a lot of freedom. Open Enzyme Collection is distributed under an Open Material Transfer Agreement (OpenMTA, https://openmta.org), which means that the resources can be used commercially and also redistributed to other labs. Typically, when plasmids are purchased from commercial suppliers, most of them have non-commercial and non-redistribution clauses unless high fees are paid. “That’s against what we’re trying to do, which is to make sure that resources are more accessible, reduce transaction costs and shorten supply chains, making the waiting time for the material reduced” says Molloy. Molloy and colleagues also started the Reagent Collaboration Network (Reclone) to connect users of the toolkits. This has a forum and monthly meetings where users can present problems for troubleshooting. 

However, as Molloy pointed out, “There’s a difference between people having the DNA and people actually producing enzymes, and we’d be interested to understand more about how to move from access to impact.” Close partnerships show that the resources have been used in South America, including labs in Chile, Peru and Colombia. Thailand, Philippines, Ghana, Cameroon, South Africa, Kenya, and Ethiopia are other locations where labs are actively using some aspects of the collection. It has been distributed to 375 student teams worldwide through the international genetically engineered machines competition (iGEM).