ISTOCK, FROM2015Researchers have developed a new technique for DNA synthesis that may craft a gene in the span of a day, according to findings published in Nature Biotechnology yesterday (June 18). This advance comes approximately 40 years after the currently available method was first established.
“We have come up with a novel way to synthesize DNA that harnesses the machinery that nature itself uses to make DNA,” study coauthor Sebastian Palluk, a biomolecular engineering doctoral student who worked on the project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, says in a statement.
The current process used by DNA manufacturing companies and in labs worldwide is lengthy, can generate toxic byproducts, and becomes more error-prone with increasing length. The procedure involves linking up small stretches of DNA in steps that can be faulty. Companies can take up to two weeks to create and deliver synthesized genes to scientists who study them.
Palluk and his colleagues decided to develop a new technique using terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT), an enzyme that is ...
