710298Desktop Genetics - Six Sigma Gene AssemblyClosedGRD Proof of ConceptInnovate UKArtificial genes made from synthetic DNA are vital to new drug research in oncology, infectious diseases and regenerative medicine, as well as the production of high-value chemicals, biofuels, and many other industrial products. Current manual gene assembly methods are laborious, time-consuming, and typically yield only 25 error-free genes per 100 attempts. Although external contractors can absorb the cost of high error rates, these services are expensive, have long turn-around times, and are all based outside the UK. Researchers currently tolerate these problems yet significant time, effort and resources are wasted on making and re-making DNA instead of the actual running of new and creative experiments. This limits the Life Sciences sector and all related areas of the economy. Our objective is to develop and demonstrate a system that will provide users with optimised in-house gene assembly methods at accuracy 100-fold greater than that achieved today. We aim to push typical success rates up to 98 error-free genes per 100 attempts. We intend to accomplish this by directly addressing the primary sources of gene assembly error: poor gene design, poor assembly methodology design, operational error and the use of error-prone starting materials. This system will be built on a robust and experimentally proven bioinformatics platform, capable of optimising DNA assembly methods based on the user’s internal inventory of existing DNA samples, as well as external inventories available from collaborators, commercial suppliers or unknown potential partners. Similar to a travel website that finds the best fares, we are developing technology that consistently finds the best way to build any molecule of DNA. The result of this work will be the acceleration of the “design-build-test” cycle in biotechnology R&D and will support the UK’s development of a “bio-economy”.