# Cone We Clone DNA Just By Knowing the Sequence But Not Having Any?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cone-we-clone-dna-just-by-knowing-the-sequence-but-not-having-any/412217>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 18, 2007, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cone-we-clone-dna-just-by-knowing-the-sequence-but-not-having-any/412217 "2007-07-18T02:56:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\
**Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cone-we-clone-dna-just-by-knowing-the-sequence-but-not-having-any/412217/1 "2007-07-18T02:56:13Z")

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Its a pretty simple question. Say some scientist gets a very complete sequence of some rare creature but both the creature and any actual DNA samples are somehow destroyed. Could you take a huge hard drive file containing the sequence letters and actually recreate that DNA given today’s technology?

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**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\
**Post date:** [July 18, 2007, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cone-we-clone-dna-just-by-knowing-the-sequence-but-not-having-any/412217/2 "2007-07-18T03:24:14Z")

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There is a way to create long sequences:  
[DNA Synthesis Method Yields 15-kb Gene Cluster](http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15402/). The quoted cost is 11 cents per base.

The \*e coli \*genome consists of about 4 million base pairs. The human, or for that matter aardvark, genome contains 2.3 billion base pairs.

It’s probably _possible_ to recreate the complete DNA of a rare creature with today’s technology, but it’d end up being pretty expensive.