Non-templated Enzymatic Synthesis of Polydeoxynucleotides

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Over the last 3 decades the cost of synthetic DNA for routine applications such as DNA sequencing, PCR and hybridization analysis has become a substantial part of many laboratory budgets. Additionally, length and quality issues limit the expansion of numerous biological applications which could impact human health developments. Finally, current DNA synthesis methods, developed 30 years ago are organic chemistry based and produce toxic waste mixtures that are difficult and costly to dispose of. This proposal describes a novel method that will lead to reduced costs in every molecular biology laboratory and enable the development of new synthetic biology applications such as faster development of vaccines, biomolecular computation, reprograming of cells and improved cellular therapeutics. The resulting massively parallel synthesis capability developed in Phase II of this project will be put to use as a custom synthesis service, similar to how custom oligos are ordered, p