A Digital DNA Nano Writer (DNA NanoFab)

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Today gene sequencing is dropping in price with the $1000 dollar genome a real possibility but what about the direct writing of DNA? Progress in DNA sequencing is down to novel developments in electronic 'read' technology but currently there is no direct 'write'. Indirect methods such as DNA or peptide synthesis are improving but these are 'bulk' methods and sub-unit control on individual molecular strands is not achieved. In this bright idea we will build a hybrid, digital CMOS driven synthetic chemical platform to write DNA directly taking advantage of the speed and parallelism of CMOS aiming for GHz write rates on a single strand of DNA and scale up using PCR. Not only will this allow the 'direct' writing of DNA but also of proteins and polymer chains. This idea is transformative since the end result will be a system that allows the digital control of matter combining digital synthesis and chemical read-write steps. As such, this approach will realise the dream of a molecular assembler allowing access to synthetic DNA an order of magnitude longer in length than the current state of the art, as inexpensively and as quickly as sequence data. In developments beyond DNA, application to polymer science will allow the assembly of digitally defined polymer strands subunit by subunit allowing a nanopore assembler to be used for the world's first true digital matter fabricator or nano-assembler.