What is the current commercial availability for de-novo gene synthesis? Has this technology become competitive with standard gene cloning in terms of cost per base and time?
• Current synthesis costs are about $1 per base pair. Current synthesis times for a 1,500 bp gene are of order 4 weeks. So, we need a ~3-fold reduction in cost and a ~10-fold reduction in turn-around time, from where we are today for commercial DNA synthesis to be competitive with standard gene cloning. Such a cost reduction could play out within the next two years; however, changes in turn-around time are much harder to predict.
