{"id":163855,"date":"2023-05-14T14:23:44","date_gmt":"2023-05-14T19:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/this-company-is-using-enzymatic-dna-synthesis-to-usher-in-the-next-generation-of-synthetic-biology-innovation"},"modified":"2023-05-14T14:23:44","modified_gmt":"2023-05-14T19:23:44","slug":"this-company-is-using-enzymatic-dna-synthesis-to-usher-in-the-next-generation-of-synthetic-biology-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/this-company-is-using-enzymatic-dna-synthesis-to-usher-in-the-next-generation-of-synthetic-biology-innovation","title":{"rendered":"This Company Is Using Enzymatic DNA Synthesis To Usher In The Next Generation Of Synthetic Biology Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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DNA writing is an aspect of our industry that I\u2019ve been closely watching for several years because it is a critical component of so many groundbreaking capabilities, from cell and gene therapies to DNA data storage. At the SynBioBeta Conference in 2018, the co-founder of a new startup that was barely more than an idea gave a lightning talk on enzymatic DNA synthesis \u2014 and I was so struck by the technology the company was aiming to develop that I listed them as one of four synthetic biology startups to watch in 2019<\/a>. I watched them, and I wasn\u2019t disappointed.<\/p>\n

Ansa Biotechnologies, Inc. \u2014 the Emeryville, California-based DNA synthesis startup using enzymes instead of chemicals to write DNA \u2014 announced in March the successful<\/a> de novo <\/em>synthesis of a 1005-mer<\/a>, the world\u2019s longest synthetic oligonucleotide, encoding a key part of the AAV vector used for developing gene therapies. And that\u2019s just the beginning. Co-founder Dan Lin-Arlow will be giving another lightning talk at this year\u2019s SynBioBeta Conference in just a few weeks. I caught up with him in the lead up and was truly impressed by what Ansa Biotechnologies has accomplished in just 5 years.<\/p>\n

Synthetic DNA is a key enabling technology for engineering biology. For nearly 40 years, synthetic DNA has been produced using phosphoramidite chemistry, which facilitates the sequential addition of new bases to a DNA chain in a simple cyclic reaction. While this process is incredibly efficient and has supported countless innovative breakthroughs (a visit to Twist Bioscience\u2019s website<\/a> will quickly educate you on exciting advances in drug discovery, infectious disease research, cancer therapeutics, and even agriculture enabled by synthetic DNA) it suffers from two main drawbacks: its reliance on harsh chemicals and its inability to produce long (read: complex) DNA fragments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DNA writing is an aspect of our industry that I\u2019ve been closely watching for several years because it is a critical component of so many groundbreaking capabilities, from cell and gene therapies to DNA data storage. At the SynBioBeta Conference in 2018, the co-founder of a new startup that was barely more than an idea [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,19,1523,1506],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-computing","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}