Twist, BioBricks launching open gene forum
Twist Bioscience Corp. (San Francisco, Calif.) and BioBricks Foundation (San Francisco, Calif.) partnered to create an open online forum for researchers to suggest and vote on genes for manufacture. BioBricks will pay for synthesis of 10,000 genes from Twist for inclusion on the platform.
BioBricks will moderate the forum and select potentially beneficial genes for manufacture. The foundation will then make the genes freely available via its Open Material Transfer Agreement (OpenMTA) program. The partners said this will be the first time that multiple genome equivalents of synthetic DNA will be made available for free to researchers. BioBricks President Drew Endy told BioCentury the first batch of genes will be prioritized and ordered next quarter...