Whole gene synthesis is rapidly becoming a powerful technology
that allows researchers the ability to distill a growing body of genetic and
structural information into improved nucleic acid sequences that would
otherwise be impossible to obtain by traditional cloning and mutagenesis
methods. Recent advances in the efficient small-scale manufacture of long and
accurate oligodeoxyribonucleotides has resulted in a low cost source of
building blocks for the assembly of larger DNA molecules by polymerase
chain reaction methods. Proof of concept experiments have yielded synthetic
replication competent viral genomes, as well as synthetic multi-gene clusters
of greater than 30 kilobase pairs in size encoding multi-enzyme systems that
catalyze efficient biosynthesis of small drug molecules. These advances have
placed whole gene synthesis on a cost trajectory that will lead to
unprecedented advances in synthetic biology, ranging from the engineering of
protein crystals to the production of re-engineered translation machineries that
can produce totally novel protein-like materials. The possible advances in
synthetic biology, enabled by whole gene synthesis, will be limited only by the
imagination of the applied life sciences research community.
