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Bioscience

NIST provides measurement assurance for the biotechnology industry through the development of quantitative analytical measurement tools for nucleic acids, proteins, metabolites, and cell systems to aid industry in the deployment of innovative biotechnologies and advanced biomaterials.

NIST standards and reference materials underpin advances in bioscience and biotechnology, contributing to human health and the U.S. economy.

NIST provides: 

  • Quantitative measurements
  • Reference materials for quality control
  • Data for benchmarking
  • Leadership and technical advice for U.S. and international standards development efforts

We have specialized expertise in and equipment for measuring biological processes and systems, along with experience in managing the large amounts of data these measurements produce. Our work benefits: 

  • Clinical medicine
  • The biopharmaceutical industry
  • Regulatory agencies
  • The DNA forensics community
  • The mass spectrometry community
  • The synthetic biology industry
  • Equipment manufacturers

The NIST Biofoundry

NIST Living Measurement Systems Foundry
NIST Living Measurement Systems Foundry
The NIST Living Measurement Systems Foundry is enabling reliable, scalable, and safe engineering of cells that can sense and respond in controlled ways for applications such as living therapeutics, environmental remediation, and structured materials fabrication. This automated facility combines high throughput measurements and machine learning to create rapid design-build-test-learn cycles for cellular engineering. For more info: https://go.usa.gov/xmdkw

Key Accomplishments

The Research

Projects & Programs

DARPA Friend or Foe (FoF) -- Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V)

Ongoing
Vision: Validate new measurement platforms for identifying commensal (friend) and pathogenic (foe) microorganisms Goal: Provide well-characterized, microbial community reference materials of increasing complexity Approach: Start with well-characterized pure cultures and scale up to complex consortia

Genome in a Bottle

Ongoing
Consortium goals: The Genome in a Bottle Consortium is a public-private-academic consortium hosted by NIST to develop the technical infrastructure (reference standards, reference methods, and reference data) to enable translation of whole human genome sequencing to clinical practice and innovations

Environmental Metabolomics

Ongoing
The application of metabolomics techniques to environmental systems biology offers a promising opportunity to achieve insights into non-model organism biology. Each biological system manifests distinctive challenges that offer insights into criteria important for rigorous study design and method

Additional Resources Links

News

Now Live: Living Cells Can Be Seen With Infrared Light

Spotlight: SURF Student Zainab Altamimi Spends Her Summer Researching the Capsules and Tablets in 3D Drug Printing

NIST Participates in White House Summit on Standards for Critical and Emerging Technology

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