DREAM - Center for Synthetic Biology

The AI-Driven, Rapid, Experimental Automation Machine (DREAM) Cloud Lab for Protein Engineering is an NSF-supported national user facility for protein engineering. Housed within the Northwestern Center for Synthetic Biology Biofoundry, DREAM will enable users across the U.S. to engineer custom proteins for applications in biomanufacturing, critical mineral mining, healthy aging, agriculture, materials and beyond, inexpensively and reliably. Powered by an AI-driven Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL) cycle leveraging cutting-edge ‘cell-free’ protein synthesis technology, DREAM will use a suite of automated equipment to rapidly produce complex proteins, and validate functional measurements by characterizing the protein’s enzyme kinetics, protein and small molecule interactions, assembly formation, mechanical properties, and folding and stability. In addition to designing new proteins, DREAM data and models will create a national protein function database, enabling breakthroughs in biological design.

Over the next year we will be building DREAM. Once DREAM is operational, it will be open to a broad base of users from community colleges to academic labs to private industry. To find out more about DREAM, submit an inquiry using the form below.