Twist Bioscience, a San Francisco-based company focused on synthetic DNA, and Ginkgo Bioworks, a Boston-based organism design company, announced today (Wednesday November 4) an “unprecedented agreement” for the purchase of synthetic DNA. According to the terms, Twist Bioscience will supply Ginkgo Bioworks with a minimum of 100 million base pairs of synthetic DNA over the course of a one-year period. This is a quantity equal to ten per cent of the total DNA synthesis market in 2015. Ginkgo Bioworks will use the synthetic DNA -- comprised of gene-length, de novo sequences -- to enable rapid prototyping to meet customer needs in industries from fragrance and flavors to cosmetics, nutrition, and health. The DNA provided by Twist is the raw material for full-capacity production in Ginkgo’s foundry, Bioworks1, and is intended to enable the projected expansion of Bioworks2 in 2016. “More and more companies are reaching out to Ginkgo to develop their biotech strategy for product development and manufacturing. The ability to access this quantity and quality of synthetic DNA at a reasonable cost enables us to meet our customers’ needs for custom organisms built at the full scale of our foundry,” said Jason Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks. “After participating in Twist’s alpha manufacturing program, we are very excited to receive synthetic DNA on this unprecedented scale, representing a significant and growing share of the global DNA synthesis market.” “This agreement with Ginkgo Bioworks marks a significant milestone for Twist Bioscience and sets the stage for continued growth as we head into our beta launch of our silicon-based DNA synthesis platform in early 2016,” said Emily Leproust, Ph.D., CEO of Twist Bioscience.Login Or Register To Read Full Story