Challenge
Designing biology on demand to innovate in biotechnology and re-establish U.S. leadership will require accurately defining the essential governing principles—from atoms to molecules to organisms to ecosystems and back. However, the nonlinear complexity of biological systems and long, costly development cycles hinder biotechnological innovations, impeding the delivery of crucial biofuels, biochemicals, and bioproducts vital for American economic prosperity and energy independence.
AI Solution
AI will integrate and interpret genomics, multi-omics, imaging, dynamics, and phenomics data into embedded models to establish genotype–phenotype relationships, identify causal control points, and guide autonomous experimentation. This will advance AI’s ability to reason about long causal chains under uncertainty, integrate across multiple scales, and learn from sparse, noisy data. Tools like digital twins could be used to derisk process development, optimization, integration, and scale-up, thereby speeding up industrial production of biofuels, biochemicals, and bioproducts by orders of magnitude.
Justification
DOE is uniquely positioned to leverage its world-class molecular and genomic capabilities of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (LBNL) Joint Genome Institute, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, the specialized feedstock and conversion capabilities of the Idaho National Laboratory’s Biomass Feedstock National User Facility, the National Laboratory of the Rockies’ Integrated Biochemical Refinement Facility & Process Development Unit, and the LBNL Advanced Biofuels/Bioproducts Process Development Unit facilities and HPC. These DOE assets, combined with AI tools and digital twins, will enable predictive design of biological processes, products, and systems and rapid scale-up of biomanufacturing.
National Impact
Accelerating AI-driven biotechnology will position the U.S. to establish leadership in the biotechnology revolution by rapidly advancing the continuum from discovery to biomanufacturing scale-up, in areas spanning energy, bio-based domestic sources of critical minerals and materials, health, agriculture, and biosecurity, and will drive economic growth and job creation across the nation.