Research

Enzymatic production of DNA oligonucleotides

Björn Högberg

Single-stranded DNA oligonucleotides form the basis for a large number of applications in biomedicine and nanotechnology. Today, DNA oligos are mainly produced by solid phase synthesis chemistry, giving oligos that are prone to getting errors incorporated and that can be expensive to produce in large quantities. As the demand for single-stranded oligos increase there is a need for a scalable process that can give oligos of high quality. The Högberg lab is working on ways to produce oligonucleotides from clonal templates using enzymatic reactions to fulfill these goals.

Moreover, by further developing this system the Högberg lab is aiming to develop a system for clonable nanostructures that will allow bacterial mass production of DNA nanodevices. Coexpression of phage ss-DNA and defined restriction enzymes suggests that rationally designed DNA nanostructures can be assembled in bacteria.