Synthetic genomics: a new venture to dissect genome fundamentals and engineer new functions.

Synthetic genomics: a new venture to dissect genome fundamentals and engineer new functions.
Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2018 May 08;46:56-62
Authors: Schindler D, Dai J, Cai Y
Abstract
Since the first synthetic gene was synthesized in 1970s, the efficiency and the capacity of made-to-order DNA sequence synthesis has increased by several orders of magnitude. Advances in DNA synthesis and assembly over the past years has resulted in a steep drop in price for custom made DNA. Similar effects were observed in DNA sequencing technologies which underpin DNA-reading projects. Today, synthetic DNA sequences with more than 10000bps and turn-around times of a few weeks are commercially available. This enables researchers to perform large-scale projects to write synthetic chromosomes and characterize their functionalities in vivo. Synthetic genomics opens up new paradigms to study the genome fundamentals and engineer novel biological functions.
PMID: 29751161 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Current Opinion in Chemical Biology - May 8, 2018 Category: Biochemistry Authors: Schindler D, Dai J, Cai Y Tags: Curr Opin Chem Biol Source Type: research