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Abstract

Bio-Design Automation (BDA) denotes the nascent domain-specific Information and Communication Technology (ICT) discipline for synthetic biology, which constitutes the core technology of the Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy (KBBE). Ultimately, the success or failure of synthetic biology and the emerging KBBE equates to the progress or lack of progress in establishing an industrial strength BDA discipline. In this paper, we seek answers to the question “What does it take for BDA to become an industrial strength discipline?” Our goal is to stimulate a broad community discussion including Business Managers, Computer Scientists, ICT professionals, Synthetic Biologists, etc. around this question. To jump-start the debate, we will provide four core hypotheses covering what we believe are the most important aspects to be considered. Given that industrial strength is a composite aggregate of several technical and managerial variables, we have chosen to take a holistic approach and not restrict ourselves a priori to any particular viewpoints. Last, but not least, we will apply our findings and provide a prototypical industrial implementation of a BDA platform.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    THE EUROPEAN BIOECONOMY IN 2030. Delivering Sustainable Growth by addressing the Grand Societal Challenges: http://www.epsoweb.org/file/560.

  2. 2.

    http://syntheticbiology.org/

  3. 3.

    http://www.gartner.com/technology/home.jsp

  4. 4.

    http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2603623

  5. 5.

    http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2209615

  6. 6.

    http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1826214

  7. 7.

    http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1454221

  8. 8.

    In silico is a term popular among synthetic biologists. Wikipedia explains (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_silico): “In silico is an expression used to mean ‘performed on computer or via computer simulation.’ The phrase was coined in 1989 as an analogy to the Latin phrases in vivo, in vitro, and in situ, which are commonly used in biology … and refer to experiments done in living organisms, outside of living organisms, and where they are found in nature, respectively.”

  9. 9.

    The labeling of the business related core hypothesis as The Business Model (, Stupid) hypothesis will be explained in Sect. 5 of this paper.

  10. 10.

    http://www.minres.com/wiki/index.php/BioParts_Terms

  11. 11.

    http://www.iwbdaconf.org/2014/

  12. 12.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_regulatory_network

  13. 13.

    Mendel is the registered trademark of the BDA platform of MINRES Technologies GmbH. The name was chosen in honor of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics.

  14. 14.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product

  15. 15.

    Lately, the MVP approach and the lean-start-up methodology became very prominent among high-tech start-ups.

  16. 16.

    https://goblinworks.com/, Goblinworks, Inc. is a start-up that develops Pathfinder, a massive-multiplayer online game.

  17. 17.

    http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/03/03/pathfinder-onlines-ryan-dancey-on-crowdforging-a-minimum-viabl/

  18. 18.

    “Product tiering is a pricing structure that is … used by producers, in which” customers “are segmented by willingness” and ability “to pay for specific (added) product benefits.” See: Breetz C (2014) Product Packaging as Tool to Demand a Price Premium: Does Packaging Enhance Consumers ‘Value Perception to Justify a Price Premium. Anchor Academic Publishing.

  19. 19.

    As the intended products are targeted mainly to SMEs, super computers are not a valid attempt for financial reasons.

  20. 20.

    SystemC is a set of C++ classes and macros which provide an event-driven simulation interface in C++; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SystemC.

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Acknowledgements

The HPC hardware related work, referred to in this paper, is supported in part by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology, Grant No. TOU-1212-0002. We wish to thank particularly Vadim Ermolayev for encouraging us in writing this paper and for his stimulating discussions on the topic.

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Matzke, WE., Barnes, C.P., Jentzsch, E., Mascher, T., Stumpf, M. (2014). On Industrial Strength Bio-design Automation. In: Ermolayev, V., Mayr, H., Nikitchenko, M., Spivakovsky, A., Zholtkevych, G. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Education, Research, and Industrial Applications. ICTERI 2014. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 469. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13206-8_14

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