Incoming links: In vitro
"De novo" means "starting from scratch", that is: you type the desired sequence into a computer, and the synthesize it.
The "de novo" part is important, because it distinguishes this from the already well solved problem of duplicating DNA from an existing DNA template, which is what all our cells do daily, and which can already be done very efficiently in vitro with polymerase chain reaction.
Notably, the dream of most of those companies is to have a machine that sits on a lab bench, which synthesises whatever you want.
The initial main applications are likely going to be:but the real pipe dream is building and bootstraping entire artificial chromosomes
- polymerase chain reaction primers (determine which region will be amplified
- creating a custom sequence to be inserted in a plasmid, i.e. artificial gene synthesis
News coverage:
- 2023-03 twitter.com/sethbannon/status/1633848116154880001
- 2020-10-05 www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0695-9 "Enzymatic DNA synthesis enters new phase"
Nuclera eDNA enzymatic de novo DNA synthesis explanatory animation (2021)
Source. The video shows nicely how Nuclera's enzymatic DNA synthesis works:- they provide blocked nucleotides of a single type
- add them with the enzyme. They use a werid DNA polymerase called terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase that adds a base at a time to a single stranded DNA strand rather than copying from a template
- wash everything
- do deblocking reaction
- and then repeat until done