Let’s talk about complex DNA — the sequences found in real genomes that present huge challenges in synthesis and assembly. Sequences with repeats, high GC content, homopolymers, and hairpins can tangle up the synthesis process. High GC content can make DNA too stable, causing the synthesis to stall, while repetitive elements and inverted repeats introduce errors or prevent full-length production. These complexities make oligo assembly incredibly difficult, which leads to high failure rates, a need for sub-assemblies, and more complex and slow manufacturing processes. As a result, most DNA synthesis companies struggle to reliably produce large, complex sequences, forcing scientists to settle for simpler, shorter DNA fragments that can compromise their research.
This is a significant setback for fields like synthetic biology, gene editing, and drug development, where precision and complexity are key. For example, long, complex sequences are crucial for targeting specific genetic mutations or engineering cells for treatment in cell and gene therapies. Yet most vendors reject orders for complex sequences, leaving scientists to redesign experiments around the sequences their vendor can handle rather than what’s best for their science. This not only slows down progress but it can also result in incomplete or inaccurate outcomes, limiting advances in critical research areas.
That’s where Ansa comes in to change the game. Our Ansamer™ oligos are longer and more accurate than any other synthesized oligo out there.
This can be illustrated best through the critical measure of stepwise yield, which refers to the efficiency of each step in the process — the fraction of full-length molecules that remain error-free as synthesis progresses. Even tiny inefficiencies accumulate over time, so a seemingly small difference in stepwise yield can dramatically affect the final product. Traditional phosphoramidite chemistry peaks at around 99.7% stepwise yield. While this might sound high, it means that after just a few hundred bases, the number of full-length molecules drops significantly, leading to lower yields, more errors, and longer assembly times.
On the other hand, Ansa’s platform boasts a 99.9% stepwise yield, a leap forward in efficiency. While the difference between 99.7% and 99.9% seems small, it becomes massive when scaling up to synthesize longer and more complex sequences. For example, if you attempted to synthesize a 1,000 bp oligo by chemical synthesis with a 99.7% stepwise yield, 5% of the molecules at the end of the synthesis would have the correct full-length sequence. With a 99.9% stepwise yield, though, 37% of molecules would have the correct full-length sequence. With such high efficiency, our platform consistently produces larger, higher-quality DNA molecules, drastically reducing the need for costly and time-consuming error correction or sub-assembly steps. This means that not only can we synthesize longer oligos more reliably, but we can also assemble larger gene constructs faster and with fewer errors.
Other companies try to patch these inefficiencies with expensive and cumbersome workarounds, such as additional error correction steps or cloning methods, which add time and cost to the process. At Ansa, we’ve built a fundamentally better system. Our high stepwise yield allows us to streamline the entire synthesis and assembly process, saving scientists time, resources, and frustration. We’re not just optimizing the old way of doing things — we’re redefining what’s possible in DNA synthesis.
Our mission is simple: make DNA synthesis as powerful as the scientists who rely on it. We’re optimizing for science and putting the impossible within reach. The mass production of long, high-quality synthetic genes? The elimination of cloning and amplification steps? We’re not just talking about it. We’re doing it.
Ansa Biotechnologies is here to unlock what the old ways can’t. The future of DNA synthesis starts now.
By Jason T. Gammack, Ansa CEO
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