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Synthetic biology

Early commercialmomentum 341,313 papers in 3 months (-12% yearly)$1.1B raised in 12 months24 companies

Engineering living cells and DNA like a technology: writing genes, redesigning organisms and designing new proteins with AI.

Why early commercial: Generate Biomedicines, whose drug candidates are engineered with generative AI, went public on Nasdaq in a $400M IPO while running Phase 3 trials. Feb 26, 2026

Papers per monthOpenAlex journal and conference papers; January includes papers dated by year only; the last two months are still filling in
0465929Sep 24Mar 25Sep 25Mar 26

Dots under a month: dated events tracked here that month.

25 events

DateEvent
Aug 2026
Aug 6Genome language models design working bacteriophagesdoi.org· Breakthrough
Aug 4DNA Script and GE HealthCare awarded up to $26M by ARPA-Hdnascript.com· Deal
Jul 2026
Jul 14Chai Discovery raises $400M at a $3.8B valuationchaidiscovery.com· Funding
Apr 2026
Apr 28Profluent partners with Eli Lilly on AI-designed recombinasesprofluent.bio· Deal
Feb 2026
Feb 26Generate Biomedicines prices $400M Nasdaq IPOgeneratebiomedicines.com· Deal
Dec 2025
Dec 1Generate Biomedicines to start Phase 3 studies of AI-engineered asthma antibodygeneratebiomedicines.com· Milestone
Oct 2025
Oct 22Ansa Biotechnologies launches 50 kb sequence-perfect clonal DNAansabio.com· Product
Oct 2Microsoft study patches DNA synthesis screening against AI-designed proteinsdoi.org· Breakthrough
Jul 2025
Jul 31E. coli with a 57-codon synthetic genome reported in Sciencedoi.org· Breakthrough
Jul 30Profluent publishes AI-designed CRISPR gene editors in Naturedoi.org· Breakthrough
Jul 22Latent Labs launches Latent-X for protein binder designlatentlabs.com· Product
Jun 2025
Jun 30Chai Discovery releases Chai-2 for zero-shot antibody designchaidiscovery.com· Product
Jun 26Wellcome funds the Synthetic Human Genome Project with 10 million poundswellcome.org· Announcement
Apr 2025
Apr 8US biotech commission delivers final report and action plan to Congressprnewswire.com· Policy
Mar 2025
Mar 31Isomorphic Labs raises $600M in its first external roundisomorphiclabs.com· Funding
Mar 4Colossal reports multiplex-edited mice with mammoth-like hairdoi.org· Breakthrough
Feb 2025
Feb 19Arc Institute and NVIDIA release Evo 2 genome language modelarcinstitute.org· Product
Jan 2025
Jan 16Colossal Biosciences raises $200M Series C at a $10.2B valuationcolossal.com· Funding
Jan 15De novo designed proteins neutralize lethal snake venom toxinsdoi.org· Breakthrough
Nov 2024
Nov 14Solugen wins $2M DoD award for bioindustrial manufacturingsolugen.com· Deal
Oct 2024
Oct 9Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to protein design and structure predictionnobelprize.org· Milestone
Jun 2024
Jun 25EvolutionaryScale releases ESM3 and an AI-designed fluorescent proteinevolutionaryscale.ai· Product
Jun 13Solugen gets conditional commitment for a $213.6M DOE loan guaranteesolugen.com· Deal
May 2024
May 8AlphaFold 3 predicts structures of protein complexes with DNA, RNA and ligandsdoi.org· Breakthrough
Apr 2024
Apr 24Xaira Therapeutics launches with $1B for AI drug designtechcrunch.com· Funding
About synthetic biology here
Sub-areas
DNA synthesis, AI protein design, Genome language models, Biomanufacturing, Synthetic genomics, Cell engineering platforms, Biosecurity screening
Stage evidence
Early commercial, Feb 26, 2026: Generate Biomedicines, whose drug candidates are engineered with generative AI, went public on Nasdaq in a $400M IPO while running Phase 3 trials. generatebiomedicines.com
Momentum
34 of 100: the mean of its ranks among the tracked fields for paper growth (25), funding in 12 months (44) and events in 90 days (34). Method
Papers
5,903 in the 12 months ending two months ago, -12% against the 12 before (OpenAlex topics, journal and conference papers).
Tracked here since
Sep 25, 2026

Changes to this field

DateChange
Sep 25, 2026Synthetic biologyTechnology: Added

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