Enzymes aim to beat chemistry by creating longer, speedier, cleaner DNA strands

The first new chemistry for DNA writing in 30 years is gathering steam, with enzymatic synthesis startups developing platforms to generate longer, purer DNA strands in record time. While the new players aim to outperform established DNA synthesis companies, the latter stand to benefit if they can adapt the enzymatic approach to their hardware.

Big leaps in DNA sequencing technology have made reading the genome substantially faster and cheaper over the last 15 years, but DNA writing still faces steep limitations in turnaround time and cost. “There is a very large discrepancy in performance between what you can do in terms of sequencing, and what is today feasible in terms of synthesis,” said DNA Script A/S co-founder and COO Sylvain Gariel...