Fully in vitro iterative construction of a 24 kb-long artificial DNA sequence to store digital information

In the absence of a DNA template, the ab initio production of long double-stranded DNA molecules of predefined sequences is particularly challenging. The DNA synthesis step remains a bottleneck for many applications such as functional assessment of ancestral genes, analysis of alternative splicing or DNA-based data storage. In this report we propose a fully in vitro protocol to generate very long double-stranded DNA molecules starting from commercially available short DNA blocks in less than 3 days using Golden Gate assembly. This innovative application allowed us to streamline the process to produce a 24 kb-long DNA molecule storing part of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 . The DNA molecule produced can be readily cloned into a suitable host/vector system for amplification and selection.

Modern Approaches to de novo Synthesis of Extended DNA Fragments: Assembly of a Wide Repertoire of Sequences

The standardization of DNA fragment assembly methods for many tasks of synthetic biology is crucial. This is necessary for synthesizing a wider repertoire of sequences, as well as for further automation and miniaturization of such reactions. In this work, we proposed conditions for the assembly of DNA fragments from chemically synthesized oligonucleotides and we identified the errors occurring in the sequence under these conditions. Additionally, we proposed conditions for further combining synthetic fragments into larger DNA fragments. We showed that the optimized conditions are suitable for the assembly of a wide range of sequences.