Onyx Genome Engineering platform.
Automated. Royalty-free. CRISPR-based.

Scalable Genome Engineering with push-button simplicity.

The Onyx® Platform is your answer for rapid microbial strain optimization. It’s a complete solution, consisting of design and analysis software, custom consumables, and a fully automated instrument. At the push of a button, you can design and generate complex libraries with thousands of edits, track results, and evaluate findings right on your benchtop.

Generate CRISPR-edited cell libraries with thousands of precise genomic edits in 2 – 4 days!

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Three components, one complete genome engineering solution.

Engineering Portal
Engineering Portal

No bioinformatic expertise required.

The Inscripta Engineering Portal is a cloud-based, advanced informatic software system designed to be used by any scientist. The user-friendly Portal navigates you through every step of your Onyx experiment. Design thousands of precise genomic edits, order custom reagents, follow instrument runs, and analyze the results.

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The Onyx Instrument
The Onyx Instrument

Automated CRISPR cell library creation.

The Onyx Instrument automates all laboratory aspects of your genome engineering experiments — cell transformation, CRISPR editing, cell growth, and cell recovery. Simply install the ready-to-use custom consumables, push go, and walk away. Cell libraries with thousands of precise edits are generated in 2 to 4 days.

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Ready to use consumables
Ready to use consumables

Customized. Precise. Ready to load.

Onyx custom engineering kits are customized for each experiment and created using patented Onyx chemistry to ensure precise editing, accurate tracking, and consistent results. Design your kit in the Portal and reagents are delivered in ready-to-use, error proof cartridges that can be loaded onto the instrument in just minutes.

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Ted Tarasow, CTO/​Founder, Sestina Bio.

“It does come down to being able to do tremendously more in terms of surveying genome wide edits with a lot fewer resources and in a lot quicker time frame.”

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Simplify and accelerate your strain development.

Easily create thousands of precise genomic edits in parallel and move through the DBTL cycle at a fraction of the time and effort of traditional methods.

Decrease time to market
Decrease time to market

Generating cell libraries with thousands of precise edits in days, the Onyx platform cuts DGTL cycle time by as much as 50%, resulting in faster project execution and reduced time to market.

Increase your success rate
Increase your success rate

The Onyx gives you the flexibility and scalability to design any type of edit across the genome, enabling you to more fully explore your strain’s biology and ensure the success of your development efforts.

Efficiency for the team
Efficiency for the team

The Onyx’s ease of use and full automation means one research scientist can manage multiple projects in parallel, from start to finish. Give them the ability to perform experiments they never dreamed they’d have the resources to do.

Royalty-free CRISPR
Royalty-free CRISPR

Use of the Onyx includes a limited, royalty-free license to use Inscripta’s proprietary MAD7® nuclease, so you can perform your experiments without any concerns about downstream royalties.

Ready to accelerate your commercial strain development? Connect with us and let our experts show you how Inscripta can reduce your time to market.

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Preventing biorisk while minimizing workflow impact.

Inscripta’s biosecurity systems are designed to maximize safety while minimizing impact on customer workflows. Our secure process includes screening platform users, user-uploaded genomes, and all design libraries.
Customer screening
Customer screening

We follow industry-standard practices and screen customer information against government-banned lists.

Customer genome screening
Customer genome screening

This screening includes a first pass at biorisk detection, comparing customer genomes against known genes that may cause harm.

Design library screening
Design library screening

Using a robust functional biorisk prediction algorithm, an in silico screen of all customer-directed edits is performed.

Learn how others use Onyx to achieve breakthrough results.

Onyx Platform Frequently Asked Questions

Still have questions? See below for answers to some of the most popular questions.

When will your platform enable gene editing in other species?

We will continue to release other species on the platform as and when the development and validation for a specific species are complete. Please contact us to let us know the species you’re interested in.

Can we use our own custom strains?

Yes, custom strains of E. coli and S. cerevisiae can be validated on the instrument using the Inscripta Customer Strain Validation Kit.

Do you often encounter genes you cannot edit? What does the coverage look like?

In essential genes, we likely will be unable to make knockouts, but we should be able to make a high percentage of site-saturation and other design types. Edit rates can be influenced by a few factors, including gRNA, HDR efficiency, and genomic context. Payload size negatively impacts edit efficiency, meaning that a larger payload size has lower editing efficiency than a smaller payload size. The impact of payload size also depends on the edit type. Impact by edit type follows this order: insertion > swap > deletion, meaning that large insertions have much lower editing efficiency as compared to large deletions. Target regions that are difficult to edit are those containing repetitive elements and extreme GC content (e.g. <25% or >70% GC).

What is the efficiency of transformation of E. coli or S. cerevisiae cells in your device (e.g. expressed as colonies per microgram)?

The Onyx platform manages the complexities of cell management and transformation efficiency, allowing biologists to concentrate on the outcome of the editing experiment. We optimize the growth, transformation and other steps in the editing process such that our output cell libraries have adequate representation of each edit cell type. At the end of the editing experiment, we will provide metrics associated with library coverage, library editing and coverage per design.

Do we have to supply competent cells for S. cerevisiae or E. coli?

No. The Onyx instrument can execute a protocol to make electrocompetent S. cerevisiae or E. coli cells through an automated workflow that ensures consistency from experiment to experiment. The workflow starts with ~10e7 cells in 50 µL glycerol stocks.

What kind of transformation protocol does the instrument perform? Regarding S. cerevisiae, do you digest the cell wall? Do you create a spheroplast?

Inscripta scientists have optimized transformation protocols for E. coli and S. cerevisiae that are automation-friendly, using a combination of standard and custom techniques/​adaptations to obtain reproducible transformation. Details of the transformation protocols are proprietary.