Ginkgo Bioworks Acquires Leading Synthetic DNA Provider Gen9

Acquisition brings unprecedented scale and speed to organism design

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Jan 20, 2017, 08:00 ET

BOSTON, Jan. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ginkgo Bioworks, the organism company, announced today the acquisition of Gen9, a pioneer in the synthesis and assembly of DNA. The acquisition will bring Gen9's unique expertise in assembling pathway-length synthetic DNA into Ginkgo's automated organism engineering foundries, enabling improved speed and capacity in the construction of new organism designs for application across a wide range of industries.

"Gen9 was founded to significantly increase the world's capacity to cost-effectively generate high-quality DNA for use in transforming industries and powering the bioeconomy. Ginkgo has been our largest customer in recent years, and we're thrilled to join forces and together forge a new trajectory for bringing the benefits of synthetic DNA to a wide range of industries. Ginkgo is truly a natural fit for Gen9," said Kevin Munnelly, President & CEO of Gen9.

As part of the acquisition deal, Ginkgo's state-of-the-art facilities will become home to Gen9's BioFab manufacturing platform and sophisticated suite of proprietary technologies, software, and informatics tools, as well as Gen9's extensive intellectual property portfolio of more than 125 patents and patents pending related to DNA synthesis and assembly technologies. Gen9's operations and research and development teams will also join Ginkgo, bringing with them significant expertise in gene synthesis. Gen9's technology has made it a worldwide leader in producing long fragments of synthetic DNA, up to 10,000 base pairs. These long designed DNA sequences are crucial for Ginkgo's pipeline of designing and prototyping multigene enzyme pathways for the production of cultured ingredients including fragrances and flavors, cosmetics, and nutritional ingredients, as well as specialty enzymes and intermediate chemicals used in a number of industries.

"Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer and through that to enable our customers to grow better products. Having Gen9's synthesis and assembly technology available to our customers is a valuable addition to our foundries, allowing us to further speed up the process of organism design," said Jason Kelly, cofounder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks. "We are seeing interest from a broad range of companies looking to use cultured ingredients to make their products in a more efficient and more sustainable way. Having more direct, immediate access to the building blocks primarily for our internal use will allow us to continue to push the envelope of what is possible in biotechnology."

About Ginkgo Bioworks
Headquartered in Boston, Ginkgo Bioworks uses the most advanced technology on the planet—biology—to grow products instead of manufacture them. The company's technology platform is bringing biotechnology into consumer goods markets, enabling fragrance, cosmetic, nutrition, and food companies to make better products. For more information, visit www.ginkgobioworks.com.

About Gen9
Gen9 is the premier next-generation gene synthesis company focused on high-quality, high-throughput, automated production of DNA constructs. The Gen9 technology allows for the lowest-cost and highest-quality DNA constructs commercially available. Founded by world leaders in synthetic biology, Gen9 aims to ensure the constructive application of synthetic biology in industries ranging from enzyme and chemical production to pharmaceuticals and biofuels. Gen9 is powering the synthetic biology revolution from our headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Grace Emery
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SOURCE Ginkgo Bioworks