Twist Bioscience Launches Long Oligos to Fuel Drug Development, DNA Data Storage and Gene Editing Research.
SAN FRANCISCO–Twist Bioscience Corporation (NASDAQ: TWST), a company enabling customers to succeed through its offering of high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, today (29 July) announced the launch of its long oligonucleotides, or oligos, product line. At up to 300 bases, or nucleotides, in length this is the longest commercial oligo offering by continuous chemical synthesis in the industry. Twist believes that these synthetic oligos will increase the success and productivity of biological research.
Historically, making oligos longer than 150-200 bases has been extremely difficult due to chemical reaction inefficiencies. The addition of each base in the sequence introduces the risk of error because of the complex chemistry required to complete the synthesis. Twist has developed a proprietary way to make oligos up to 300 bases, with an industry-leading error rate as low as 1:1500 nucleotides.
“This new product launch provides Twist with a competitive advantage not only in oligo pool products, where longer oligos are useful in drug discovery and development, but also in data storage, where longer pieces of DNA can store more digital data per strand. In addition, longer oligos are uniquely enabling for certain CRISPR gene editing and protein engineering applications, where researchers can substantially increase their productivity. We believe there are additional applications where longer oligos will lead to more robust research discoveries, and we’re excited to be a part of pushing this science further,” said Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience.
With this technical achievement and commercial product launch spearheaded by Patrick Weiss, senior vice president of research and development and general manager of data storage for Twist Bioscience, he and Twist Bioscience hold the record for the longest oligonucleotide synthesis at scale.
“Synthesis of long oligonucleotides at scale requires significantly optimized engineering solutions to prevent errors including deletions, substitutions, insertions and fragmentations, which typically compound substantially with longer pieces of DNA,” commented Mr. Weiss. “Having been integrally involved in the DNA synthesis industry for 25 years, achieving this commercial milestone in a production environment is a true testament to the strength of the team and the robust technology.”
For more information about long oligonucleotides, please visit: https://www.twistbioscience.com/products/oligopools.