An official website of the United States government
Here’s how you know
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
https://www.nist.gov/bioscience
Bioscience
NIST provides measurement assurance for the biotechnology industry through the development of quantitative analytical measurement tools for nucleic acids, proteins, metabolites, and cell systems to aid industry in the deployment of innovative biotechnologies and advanced biomaterials.
NIST standards and reference materials underpin advances in bioscience and biotechnology, contributing to human health and the U.S. economy.
NIST provides:
Quantitative measurements
Reference materials for quality control
Data for benchmarking
Leadership and technical advice for U.S. and international standards development efforts
We have specialized expertise in and equipment for measuring biological processes and systems, along with experience in managing the large amounts of data these measurements produce. Our work benefits:
Clinical medicine
The biopharmaceutical industry
Regulatory agencies
The DNA forensics community
The mass spectrometry community
The synthetic biology industry
Equipment manufacturers
The NIST Biofoundry
Key Accomplishments
DNA reference materials accelerate product development and provide quality assurance to clinical test labs and manufacturers.
The NIST Genome Editing Consortium addresses the measurements and standards needed to increase confidence and lower the risk of using genome editing technologies in research and commercial products.
The NIST monoclonal antibody reference material — the NISTmAb — is used by biopharmaceutical firms for quality assurance and to evaluate new biomanufacturing methods and tools.
Facilities such as the NIST Center for Neutron Research help industry members develop the expertise to use rare neutron scattering tools. Leading biotech companies such as Genentech, Amgen, Regeneron and Pfizer are part of the nSoft consortium, using neutron science to explore protein-based pharmaceuticals produced by living cells.
Vision Validate new measurement platforms for identifying commensal (friend) and pathogenic (foe) microorganisms Goal Provide well-characterized, microbial community reference materials of increasing complexity Approach Start with well-characterized pure cultures and scale up to complex consortia in
Consortium goals: The Genome in a Bottle Consortium is a public-private-academic consortium hosted by NIST to develop the technical infrastructure (reference standards, reference methods, and reference data) to enable translation of whole human genome sequencing to clinical practice and innovations
The application of metabolomics techniques to environmental systems biology offers a promising opportunity to achieve insights into non-model organism biology. Each biological system manifests distinctive challenges that offer insights into criteria important for rigorous study design and method
Intended impact Ionizing radiation-resistant microorganisms have recently garnered a great deal of attention from scientists seeking to understand the mechanisms underlying the survival abilities of these organisms. Much of the focus has been on mechanisms of cellular repair of radiation-induced DNA
The NIST Genome Editing Consortium addresses the measurements and standards needed to increase confidence and lower the risk of utilizing genome editing technologies in research and commercial products.