Recipient: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. (Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science – MPG)
Funding: GO-Bio initial conceptual phase 4 (01/10/2023 to 30/09/2024, EUR 97,485.00)

Project description:

The main driver of the biological revolution in recent decades has been access to synthetic DNA, which forms the basis for a variety of routine applications in the field of life sciences and biopharmaceuticals. The age of synthetic biology will offer future applications in areas such as gene and cell therapy, vaccines or diagnostics, leading to a rapidly growing demand for synthetic DNA. Since the 1980s phosphoramidite chemistry has been the gold standard for synthetic DNA production. However, the technology is error-prone, generates toxic waste products and can only produce short fragments of DNA. The increased demands on synthetically produced DNA due to innovative applications can only be met with great effort or not at all. In order to meet the requirements of modern applications and enable new innovations, a platform technology for enzymatic DNA synthesis is to be developed. Compared to existing methods longer and additionally error-free DNA fragments, which address a broad demand in the life sciences, are to be produced under environmentally friendly conditions.

In the exploratory phase of GO-Bio initial the best possible utilisation of the DNA synthesis platform is to be developed. To this end a market and property rights analysis will be carried out, possible cooperation partners will be identified and the requirements for the technology will be defined.