“It’s also important to note that Arlow’s company is doing synthesis as a service rather than selling bioprinters that can enable any researcher to make their own DNA. ‘One of the reasons we’re developing our business as a DNA synthesis service… as opposed to making a printer… is because that gives us a much greater ability to vet orders for…
“Ansa Biotechnologies today announced that it has raised $7.9 million in an oversubscribed Seed round of funding led by Horizons Ventures, with participation from Mubadala Capital, Humboldt Fund, and additional investors. Combined with a Pre-Seed round raised in December 2018 led by Fifty Years, the company has raised $9.2 million to date.…” View the press release.
“The standard technique, called phosphoramidite synthesis, is decades old and struggles to produce sequences longer than about 200 bases; anything bigger must be created by linking the fragments together. Enzymatic synthesis methods are a promising alternative. In 2018, for instance, researchers led by synthetic biologist Jay Keasling and his then-PhD student Daniel Arlow at the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrated…
“If there is better [synthesis through] enzyme chemistry, I’ll be the first customer.” Once the approach reaches one of any number of milestones—longer, fewer errors, or faster production—she’d be on board. “I’ll take cheaper but frankly I’ll pay more if it’s faster or better or longer.” -Emily LeProust Read the full article.
The patent covers the core enzymatic DNA synthesis approach that will power Ansa’s nucleic acid manufacturing service. We are proud to work together with the University of California, Berkeley, to develop this technology further aiming to speed up research across all disciplines of biology and biotechnology.
Ansa Biotechnologies has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $ 225,000 to conduct research and development (R&D) work on improved reagents for enzymatic DNA synthesis. “NSF is proud to support the technology of the future by thinking beyond incremental developments and funding the most creative, impactful ideas across all markets and areas…
“Those products could fill niches that chemistry cannot: long, complex sequences — synthetic gene libraries, for instance — for which assembly from shorter segments can add significant delays. “Any technology that can make that faster is going to be very valuable,” says Christopher Voigt, a synthetic biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.“ Read the full article.
“DNA synthesis is the cornerstone of synthetic biology and demand for the technology is growing at an unprecedented rate. California-based Ansa Biotechnologies is seeking to upend an industry that has relied on chemical processes for decades, providing accurate, clean, and, importantly –fast — DNA using enzymes instead of chemicals.” Read the full article.
“Creating a new gene in a single day could soon be possible, thanks to a new technique that mimics the way the body copies its own DNA. Though the technology needs to clear a few more hurdles, it could one day let researchers speedily rewrite microbe genes, enabling them to synthesize new medicines and fuels on the fly. “It’s the…
First publication of an enzymatic method for the synthesis of novel DNA sequences, using an approach based on polymerase-nucleotide conjugates that have the ability to extend a DNA molecule by one building block at a time. The technology was featured, besides others, in a commentary article in Nature Biotechnology and Nature Methods, STAT News, Cosmos Magazine, Genome Web, Singularity Hub…