Harnessing the power of synthetic biology to combat COVID-19

In his 2018 TED talk “How to build synthetic DNA and send it across the internet,” Dr. Dan Gibson highlighted a unique synthetic biology approach for fighting pandemics such as SARS, H1N1, and Ebola. Two years later, the unmitigated threat of COVID-19 has affected more than 2 million people to date and is expected to impact millions more.

The current outbreak demands innovative synthetic biology solutions to develop vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments. Moreover, the identified number of genome variants of SARS-CoV-2 thus far is likely to impact future efforts towards the prevention, detection, and treatment of the disease. Solutions are needed to rapidly construct the SARS-CoV-2 genome, genome variants, genome parts, and vaccine / therapeutic scaffolds to treat and prevent current and future strains of the virus.

Join us as we discuss our approach to completing the world’s first on-demand synthesis of the SARS-CoV-2 genome using a commercially available, automated DNA assembly and cloning instrument — the BioXp™ 3200 system. This solution accelerates vaccine, diagnostic, and treatment development pipelines by enabling rapid synthesis of up to 32 individual gene fragments in a single overnight run. We will also discuss the hierarchical assembly of the full-length SARS-CoV-2 genome and its potential applications.