Autonomous assembly of synthetic oligonucleotides built from an expanded DNA alphabet. Total synthesis of a gene encoding kanamycin resistance

• Kristen K. Merritt,
• Kevin M. Bradley,
• Daniel Hutter,
• Mariko F. Matsuura,
• Diane J. Rowold and
• Steven A. Benner

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2014, 10, 2348–2360, doi:10.3762/bjoc.10.245

• information density of DNA, allow larger numbers of DNA fragments to autonomously self-assemble into large DNA constructs. This technology can therefore increase the size of DNA constructs that might be used in synthetic biology. Keywords: automated gene synthesis; artificially expanded genetic information

• systems; solid-phase DNA synthesis; synthetic biology; Introduction It has been nearly 50 years since the first solid-phase synthesis of DNA by Letsinger and Mahadevan [1][2]. This work laid the platform for new strategies in oligonucleotide synthesis, culminating in the development of phosphoramidite

OligArch: A software tool to allow artificially expanded genetic information systems (AEGIS) to guide the autonomous self-assembly of long DNA constructs from multiple DNA single strands

• Kevin M. Bradley and
• Steven A. Benner

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2014, 10, 1826–1833, doi:10.3762/bjoc.10.192

• available as parts of artificially expanded genetic information systems (AEGIS), and tools are now available to generate entirely standard DNA from AEGIS DNA during PCR amplification. Here, we describe the OligArch (for "oligonucleotide architecting") software, an application that permits synthetic