POLICY & PRACTICE

While designing and making our new microfluidic chips, the 2014 iGEM EPFL team realized that it would be a great to have a microfluidic iGEM registry analogue to the current iGEM DNA Parts registry. Similarly to Biobricks, microfluidic chips also have basic, intermediate and composite structures that can be combined and reused as building blocks.

Creating a database of these parts would contribute to the already enormous library of DNA parts, and would moreover give a help all the iGEM teams looking into integrating microfluidics in their projects.

As a microfluidic registry isn’t available, we created with one with as template the DNA parts registry to make this novel registry's integration easy. We kept in mind that the registry will develop itself, just as chip designs will integrate new parts, so we designed a nomenclature system enabling both horizontal (adding types of parts) and vertical (adding sub-parts) expansion.

Enlarging project possibilities

iGEM projects are becoming more complex and innovative. The variety of organisms, biological components, and technologies are rapidly evolving leading to a restructuring of the context in which they can be integrated. We believe that microfluidic chips are the ideal devices to reunite these elements in an easy and safe way - no wonder they call them "labs on a chip".

It is important to say, related to our safety work (link here), that the use of microfluidic chips improves the risk with genetically modified cells, as these are contained in a stable & in a way, isolated environment. This is useful for the future development of iGEM, because as projects become more complex and innovative/crazy/risky and start contemplating more complex questions, more organisms are used, and the usage of microfluidic chips will certainly develop the use of level 2 organisms, which are interesting in a different way that level 1 orgs. This will bring a surge of new ideas, which were difficult to contemplate because of the safety principles, because a wide range of currently unsafe experiences/organisms will become [safe enough to use] Link to our safety thingy

Structure of the Microfluidic Parts Registry

To maintain a uniform structure of reusable parts throughout the whole registry, the system was designed in the following way, where each white box represents each type of reusable microfluidic brick, and the red arrows represent links from one to the other.

As such a structure needs a different submission page than the ones already existing, we designed it. You can find a sample submission page for microfluidic parts here. Sample pages of some of the parts were also made: Microfluidic Chip Information Page, ???.

The Microfluidic Chip Design pages correspond to DNA BioBricks pages. Therefore, they include:

• A short description of the chip, its intended purpose
• The design file of the chip*
• An information page with the owner, the part type, a list of components, the intended material...
• Links to the other parts related to this one (protocols used on this chip)

* To make that possible, the iGEM server has to allow uploads of design files such as: .gds, .dxf, .cif, and .dvg.

The Mask & Wafer Protocol (MWP) pages consist of the detailed procedures of mask & wafer fabrication. They include a list of instruments and materials, and the exact procedure, organized as a series of bullet points.

The Chip Fabrication Protocol (CFP) pages are similar to the Mask & Wafer Protocol pages, as they are highly detailed and specific.

These pages are also linked to one another when used for the same chip, as can be seen in the diagram above. That creates a network of compatible protocols and procedures, very useful for other iGEM teams.

The Usage Protocol & Software pages consist of the protocols for the experiments and chip setup procedures. These procedures can be less detailed and specific than those in the MWP and CFP pages, as they are more easily modified. They can be videos of the setup procedure. As microfluidic users sometimes create software to control their experiment automatically, this would be included in this page, for other teams to use.

Naming the parts

The microfluidic parts would be named similarly to the DNA BioBricks:

With this naming structure, a fast identification of the main type of chip is possible.

The chips' units are not separated in different parts, as it is important to see the construction around each functional unit. However, as these units had to be found easily within the database, a selection of components was added to the part submission page, which would appear in the information page.