[DIYbio] Ultra-Cheap DNA Printing/Sequencing

We all would love to be able to print DNA as cheaply and easily as we can print a copy of a article. This would transcend printing just oglio primers. Every day I wish I could print whole genomes, and I'm sure most of you do as well. 

The issue: printing large DNA fragments costs about $0.35 a base, $0.10 at best. (Gen9)

This means that a 1 kb gene would cost $350 to make. Imagine the cost of printing 20 variants of that gene and testing the expression product of each to figure out exactly which version of your synthetic protein works best for you.  The cost would be insane. What if compiling a 350-line C++ program cost even just $50. Programming would be reserved to graduate schools, just as synthetic biology is today. 

Designing and successfully generating synthetic genomes in a garage for less than $500 per genome is necessary for the biotech revolution to play out even half as well as the computer revolution did. Thus, it's evident to all of us that DNA printing needs a massive cost reduction. 

While organizations like Cambrian Genomics and Gen9 are doing great work quickly, they are still mainly limited to academia even though I know that neither wants to be. (Especially Cambrian)

Perhaps it's time that we at DIYBio came up with our own means of DNA printing and sequencing. It may be rough and inaccurate at first, but I'm certain that the project will take off within a year or so, and eventually become industry-standard. It would be like the GNU/Linux of synthetic biology. ;) 

As a seed idea, we could use carbon nanotubes created using vapor deposition around nickle nanoparticles of around 12 nm in diameter. Then, in an argon atmosphere, the nanotubes would be doped with gold atoms on one side. DNA would be pulled through a stack of these nanotubes as in electrophoresis (from a positive charge to a negative one of the other side of the chamber) and surface interactions with the DNA bases could be monitored through the gold nanoparticles. It wouldn't be easy to pull off, but one divide could shotgun sequence DNA incredibly quickly with a high degree of accuracy. As for printing, DNA would be produced conventionally, but this time with a small laser at the end of the carbon nanotubes. If the DNA currently running through any given carbon nanotube did not match the desired strand, the laser at the end would activate, destroying the strand. 

Production of a device like that would not be something everyone was doing, but rather something in the public domain that any company could manufacture. We don't make our own CPUs, nor would they be easy to make at home (by not easy I mean virtually impossible), but we all know how to use them. Just like the modern CPU, however, we can do something that follows the same idea, just is much less efficient. From there, increasing purity would be all that is required. 

I would love to hear your ideas. 

-L