In 2020, Cloning Facility completed the development of its own technology platform, which enabled the company to be the first in its industry to enter the Russian plasmid assembly market.

The assembly of genetic constructs is a necessary step in many basic and applied biological projects, which is carried out in most scientific laboratories in both public research institutions and private companies. "Typically, plasmid assembly - from cloning design to obtaining a solution of DNA molecules with validated sequencing - takes a significant proportion of the time of scientists, who are most often not experts in this field and have to deal with various methodological challenges," the company explained.

Currently, assembling genetic constructs is a technical challenge similar to oligonucleotide synthesis and sequencing. Biotechnology companies and research laboratories around the world are moving to order not only synthetic DNA, but also the assembly of genetic constructs from specialized companies. However, in Russia, the actual transition of these services into the category of routine services has not yet taken place, despite the availability of offers in this market.

The mass transfer of this technical task to the commercial sector was impeded by the absence of offers for DNA synthesis at prices not exceeding $0.2 per base. In Russia, due to difficulties with customs, currency control, and the need for intermediary firms between state scientific institutions and foreign manufacturing companies, the market for synthetic DNA is largely isolated and does not reflect current technology.

According to the company, the most important reason preventing the transition of genetic construct assembly into a routine service was the non-standard nature of each cloning task: due to the lack of cheap and efficient synthesis methods, even simple DNA assembly tasks required obtaining material from customers, sequence verification and tailoring the construct assembly design to a specific sequence.

Each of these steps required considerable time of employees for service of orders, that is why commercial companies could not offer adequate price optimization by scaling up the process. As a result, turnaround times significantly exceeded the time it took for the scientists themselves to assemble the genetic designs themselves.

"In the past few years, the development of DNA synthesis methods, as well as the optimization and standardization of technologies for assembling complex genetic constructs, have changed the landscape of biotechnology research, which allowed Cloning Facility to outsource DNA synthesis and plasmid assembly work," the company said.

About the company

Cloning Facilitacy LLC is a Russian biotechnology company carrying out DNA synthesis, assembly of arbitrary genetic constructions and creation of custom transgenic organisms. The mission of Cloning Facility is to create in Russia an ecosystem of rapid and accessible biotechnological services that would enable the development of commercial and scientific projects. In its work the Company relies on modern approaches in molecular biology as well as proprietary technologies.

"Cloning Facility employs standardisation and automation of biological procedures, thus increasing efficiency and reducing costs.

The project is led by experts in the fields of synthetic and molecular biology, with publications in scientific journals such as Nature, Nature Biotechnology and PNAS. The project's scientific team has several self-developed technologies under its belt, some of which are applied in the work of Cloning Facility.

In 2019, the company received the status of a resident of the Skolkovo Innovation Center and entered the Russian market for the assembly of genetic constructs. In 2020, the organization's range of services expanded to include custom R&D work for large industrial enterprises.

The main clients of Cloning Facility are research laboratories and biotechnology companies. In the future the company plans to expand its presence on the Russian market, as well as to enter the international market.

Products

"The company manufactures two types of products - standardised biotechnological services (fast and cheap) and complex studies (expensive).

Examples of standardized services are creation of synthetic DNA, assembly of complex plasmids, and creation of transgenic microorganisms.

Examples of complex research include development of producer strains for industry, protein purification methods, creation of purified protein preparations, creation of transgenic plants and animals, genomic editing.