DNA synthesis

The yet-to-be-named entity will draw on the partners' respective resources in synthetic biology and plant and agricultural products.

The Series A round included investments from Illumina Ventures, Merck KGaA's M Ventures, Sofinnova Partners, Kurma Partners, and Idinvest Partners.

The two companies will work in tandem to provide customers worldwide with access to genes up to 70 kilobases in length.

The collection will be made available by BioBricks at no cost to the research community.

Agilent filed a lawsuit against Twist nearly a year ago, alleging that Twist Cofounder and CEO Emily LeProust had stolen DNA oligonucleotide synthesis technology. 

Through the deal, Ginkgo has picked up Gen9's manufacturing platform and suite of proprietary technologies, software, and informatics tools for DNA synthesis and assembly.

The company intends to use the proceeds of the round to advance its proprietary enzymatic DNA synthesis technology called EcoDNA.

Gen9's arrangement with renewable products firm Amyris comes about two months after it launched an access program for its low-cost DNA synthesis services.