Gen9 To Supply Ginkgo BioWorks With 300 Million Base Pairs Of Synthetic DNA For Pathway Engineering

In unprecedented deal, Ginkgo partners with Gen9 for massive quantities of long-length DNA critical to metabolic pathway engineering across multiple industries

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Gen9 announced an agreement with Ginkgo Bioworks for the manufacture and supply of 300 million base pairs of long-length synthetic DNA content. The customized DNA is the critical raw material for Ginkgo’s biological prototypes for products engineered through synthetic biology. This groundbreaking partnership between two synthetic biology powerhouses will leverage Gen9’s unique industrial capabilities in building pathway-length DNA at an unparalleled scale. Ginkgo will use the DNA to more rapidly generate genetic designs for testing in its organism engineering foundry for applications in the chemicals, industrial enzymes and therapeutics markets.

“With these orders, Ginkgo is able to move towards outsourcing essentially all of our in vitro DNA construction to the DNA synthesis industry. If your company is still cloning by hand you’re missing out on a big opportunity.”

“Long pieces of DNA are essential to metabolic engineering, and Gen9 is the best in the world at building large constructs. We’re delighted to work with Gen9 on this unprecedented order of pathway-length DNA synthesis,” said Jason Kelly, CEO and Co-Founder of Ginkgo Bioworks.

The DNA will be built on Gen9’s BioFab® DNA construction platform. Comprising multiple proprietary technologies from rapid design and optimization of thousands of DNA sequences, to chip-based oligo synthesis, to multiplex DNA assembly, the platform enables construction of gene to pathway length DNA at an unrivalled scale. Gen9’s technology makes traditional manual DNA cloning and low-throughput synthesis methods obsolete, enabling more aggressive scientific approaches focused on parallel design and testing.

Added Jason Kelly, “With these orders, Ginkgo is able to move towards outsourcing essentially all of our in vitro DNA construction to the DNA synthesis industry. If your company is still cloning by hand you’re missing out on a big opportunity.”

“Our industrial manufacturing process delivers enormous capacity for sequence-perfect, long-length DNA content, and we are thrilled that Ginkgo is utilizing our unique capabilities as a key driver to accelerate their organism engineering at a level never before seen in the industry,” said Kevin Munnelly, President and CEO of Gen9. “Engineering with biology is driving innovations that will solve some of the biggest challenges we face in the world today. As market demand for large enzyme, pathway and organism engineering projects grows at a dramatic pace, Gen9 will provide the DNA to fuel those projects.”

Earlier this year, Gen9 launched its MAP (Multiplex Access Partnership) program for customers to leverage the BioFab® platform for megabase quantities of synthetic DNA at preferred pricing. Researchers and organizations interested in taking advantage of Gen9’s MAP program can find more information at www.gen9bio.com/map.

About Gen9

Gen9 is the premier next-generation gene synthesis company focused on high-quality, high-throughput, automated production of DNA constructs. The Gen9 technology allows for the lowest-cost and highest-quality DNA constructs commercially available. Founded by world leaders in synthetic biology, Gen9 aims to ensure the constructive application of synthetic biology in industries ranging from enzyme and chemical production to pharmaceuticals and biofuels. Gen9 is powering the synthetic biology revolution from our headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Visit Gen9 at www.gen9bio.com.