Ginkgo BioWorks Tapped for $4.1M Synthetic DNA Effort

Ryan McBride9/16/09

Boston-based synthetic biology startup Ginkgo BioWorks has been selected as one of two entities to support a Scottish initiative to find better ways to assemble synthetic DNA, according to ITI Life Sciences, which has committed $4.1 million to the effort. ITI Life Sciences is a unit of ITI Scotland, a firm that was formed in 2003 by the government of Scotland to help grow industries in the country such as life sciences, energy, and digital media. Ginkgo BioWorks was launched in 2008 by five MIT scientists and researchers to make the construction of synthetic DNA easier and faster, according to its website.