dbDNA™: A technology to enable the next generation of DNA-based products

The way we think about DNA is changing. While we are pushing the boundaries of the material as a biological building block for novel therapeutics, science also is going further to consider DNA as a self-assembling, organic, nanodimensional, data storing, negatively charged polymer. Applications for such a material continue to expand and develop, however their ultimate success is limited by the availability of suitable DNA sources. The trade-off when choosing a DNA source, between low cost and low quality vs better quality and extremely high cost, is often regarded as the greatest hurdle for commercialisation of such DNA enabled products. Limitations of current DNA sources in terms of length, scale, sequence complexity, speed of production, purity and cost mean that the science itself has been restricted to not what DNA is capable of, but what DNA is available. Touchlight has developed and patented an in vitro, dual enzyme DNA amplification technology that addresses the limitations imposed by other sources of DNA. The process is capable of generating commercial scale and quality batches of very long and complex sequences (secondary structure, repeats, etc.) in just a couple of weeks using disposable plastics on a benchtop. Touchlight's product; doggyboneTM or dbDNATM is minimal, containing any sequence of interest with no extraneous bacterial components (backbone, replication origins), and has an error rate of <;1/10⁷. Touchlight's vision is to utilise this technology to enable the success of the next generation of leading DNA based products.