Enzymes are the heart of each and every diagnostic test. Enzymes are the means we can track, study and defeat old and new infectious diseases. However, enzymes are typically globally distributed from centralized foundries and, most often, require a cold chain for stability restricting their access to the many, even more in times of supply chain disruptions as we are seeing in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Research in Diagnostic DNA Collection provides researchers worldwide with an open source toolkit to produce their own enzymes, streamlining their research in diagnostics irrespective of supply chain disruptions.

The collection includes

• ready-to-use expression cassettes to produce essential enzymes used in diagnostic among which RT, Bst-LF, RPA enzymes, RNA inhibitors;
• A set of constructs for the production of Sars-CoV-2 RNA positive and negative controls;
• DNA modules to build up expression cassettes tailored to your lab’s resources with a choice between 20 genes, 6 promoters, 10 purification tags and 6 cleavage sites among others. The DNA modules are MoClo, SEVA, Loop, CIDAR assembly compatible.

This project is a collaboration between the Open Bioeconomy Lab, the Federici Lab at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Open Science Network Vancouver, Ginkgo Bioworks and Free Genes at the BioBricks Foundation.