[koeng]

How can we lower the price of making synthetic DNA?

All the graphs on this topic are out-dated, specifically because the hype-train doesn't want to acknowledge that the price of usable synthetic DNA has gone up - not down (even when balanced for inflation) - over the last 5 years.

Enzymatic DNA synthesis companies are not fixing this, or if they are, are at least 5-10 years out. The fundamentals of DNA synthesis are actually super cost effective. The raw price of a 100bp ssDNA vs an assembled gene, ready to be used in a biological context, is ~200x. Even at small-ish scale, the price for a full assembled gene from the same supplier is $125 per kilobase, while the small synthesized fragment is only $4. And they're STILL losing money on the assembled genes.

Assembling genes is really unsexy, though, so the field is kinda stuck in hyping DNA synthesis while ignoring fundamentals of DNA assembly.

[arjun_krishna1]

Wow and what do we use synthetic DNA for? Creating organisms with a modified genome?

[koeng]

Yep. You can also do things like mRNA vaccines, or build industrially useful enzymes, or make crops resistant to disease. Pretty much any biotechnology that involves engineering life.