The hotly awaited launch of Twist Bioscience’s Alpha Manufacturing Program was recently announced by CEO Emily Leproust during her keynote at SynBioBeta London

Twist launched the program for synthetic DNA sequences up to 1.8 kb and promised delivery in 20 business days or less via the 10,000-well silicon-based platform. “Delivery of our initial products marks a significant milestone for the organization,” said Emily Leproust Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Twist Bioscience.The company will work with customers to optimize the efficiency of its technology, and it aims to decrease the time and costs required for DNA synthesis, as well as to increase the length of the genes. The silicon-based platform works on a reduction in well size and reduced need for reagents, which has been greatly anticipated.Amyris was announced as one of the first early adopters to participate in the alpha program, and it aims to take advantage of high-quality genes to speed up the production of new molecules and optimize its automated strain engineering platform. “We are looking forward to working with Twist, building on promising early results, to further test and validate their novel platform for DNA synthesis,” said Darren Platt, vice president of data science at Amyris.

The 10,000-well silicon platform outpaces the traditional 96-well plates. By conducting heat better than plastic, silicon speeds up the chain-elongation reactions; the platform reduces the amount of reagents from microliters to nanoliters, therefore decreasing costs; and it can also be used to produce synthetic RNA. Source: Twist Bioscience and SynBioBeta.Potential customers for synthetic genes include companies working in the fields of genome engineering, data storage, biodetection, functional genomics, personalized medicine, biobased chemicals and agriculture production. You can find more information about the program on the Twist website.https://twitter.com/TwistBioscience/status/590881214468333568