Ginkgo Bioworks is a synthetic biology and biotechnology company using machine learning techniques and lab automation to engineer microorganisms as a service.
On October 19th, 2016, Ginkgo Bioworks announced a partnership with Prospect BioProspect Bio to create a new biosensor to improve the speed and lower the cost of organism prototyping for new strain development. The biosensor under development will make the process of organism screening (testing for a desired trait) faster. Organism screening is one of the slowest processes of the design, build, test system Ginkgo Bioworks uses for organism development. Normally, each organism created by Ginkgo Bioworks has to be screened individually. A biosensor allows for the screening of many organisms at one time. Ginkgo Bioworks is hoping for a forty-fold decrease in the cost of screening and increase the speed of creating commercial ready organisms.