Non-Optical Methods for High Speed Protein Control

DARPA's Biological Technologies Office is conducting an open shopping competition through the ERIS Marketplace for innovative, non-optogenetic protein domains enabling real-time cellular control, with rolling reviews through December 31, 2026. Amendment 1 to the Special Notice clarifies the deadline; the original notice closing date of December 8, 2026 has been extended to December 31, 2026.

The effort seeks rapidly switchable protein domains capable of massless information transfer across cell membranes to supplement synthetic biology platforms. Solutions must achieve activation/deactivation kinetics of 2 seconds, maintain robust performance across at least 300 repetitions in living cells, and demonstrate versatility in both split-protein and allosteric configurations. While magnetogenetic approaches are strongly encouraged, other innovative modalities using non-optical external signals—including focused ultrasound and magnetic fields—are acceptable. Proposals expanding optogenetic, light-based, or chemical systems are explicitly excluded.

DARPA will evaluate responses on problem definition and current state-of-art knowledge, technical innovation, team expertise in synthetic biology and protein engineering, and potential impact on defense and commercial applications including biomanufacturing and cell-based therapeutics. The anticipated award is approximately $400,000 for a 12-month performance period. Contractors may submit flagged existing awardable solutions via email to ERIS@darpa.mil or submit new video proposals through the standard ERIS submission process for all collection periods through December 2026.