Emily LeProust explained

Emily Leproust is an American scientist and entrepreneur. She is the CEO and co-founder^[1] of Twist Bioscience, a public company working on DNA synthesis. The company harnesses synthetic biology, providing tools to manufacture insulin from yeast, to tackle malaria,^[2] produce spider silk at scale^[3] or store information on DNA.^{[4] [5]} She was awarded the BIO Rosalind Franklin Award in 2020.^[6]

Education and career

Leproust earned an M.Sc. in Industrial Chemistry from the Lyon School of Industrial Chemistry^[7] in 1995 and a PhD in Organic Chemistry & Nucleic Acids Chemistry from the University of Houston in 2001.^[8] She worked for the company Agilent where she was Director of Applications and Chemistry R&D—Genomics before starting the company Twist Bioscience.

Leproust participated in a March 2021 tabletop exercise at the Munich Security Conference simulating an outbreak of weaponized monkeypox.^[9]

Publications

• Gnirke A, Melnikov A, Maguire J, Rogov P, LeProust EM, Brockman W, Fennell T, Giannoukos G, Fisher S, Russ C, Gabriel S. Solution hybrid selection with ultra-long oligonucleotides for massively parallel targeted sequencing. Nature biotechnology. 2009 Feb;27(2):182-9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc2663421/
• Kaplan N, Moore IK, Fondufe-Mittendorf Y, Gossett AJ, Tillo D, Field Y, LeProust EM, Hughes TR, Lieb JD, Widom J, Segal E. The DNA-encoded nucleosome organization of a eukaryotic genome. Nature. 2009 Mar;458(7236):362-6. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07667
• Goldman N, Bertone P, Chen S, Dessimoz C, LeProust EM, Sipos B, Birney E. Towards practical, high-capacity, low-maintenance information storage in synthesized DNA. Nature. 2013 Feb;494(7435):77-80.

Notes and References

1. Web site: RFS Briefings - September 30, 2020 . 2024-09-03 . www.rosalindfranklinsociety.org.
2. How synthetic biology can improve our health, food and materials . 2021-03-16 . Leproust . Emily . en . 2024-09-03 . www.ted.com.
3. Web site: How DNA synthesis is powering the fourth manufacturing revolution - with Emily Leproust - The SynBioBeta Podcast . 2024-09-03 . pod.co.
4. Goldman . Nick . Bertone . Paul . Chen . Siyuan . Dessimoz . Christophe . LeProust . Emily M. . Sipos . Botond . Birney . Ewan . Towards practical, high-capacity, low-maintenance information storage in synthesized DNA . Nature . February 2013 . 494 . 7435 . 77–80 . 10.1038/nature11875 . 23354052 . 3672958 . 2013Natur.494...77G .
5. Vitak . Sarah . Technology alliance boosts efforts to store data in DNA . Nature . 3 March 2021 . 10.1038/d41586-021-00534-w . 33658669 . 232112632 .
6. BIO Announces 2020 BIO IMPACT Award Winners . BIO . 17 September 2020 .
7. Web site: Rahman . Lu . 2021-01-18 . Sitting down with…Emily Leproust, CEO, Twist Bioscience . 2024-09-03 . Drug Discovery World (DDW) . en-US.
8. Web site: Asking All the Right Questions: Emily Leproust (’01), Top Global Thinker Give . 2024-09-03 . en-US.
9. Web site: Yassif . Jaime . O'Prey . Kevin . Isaac . Christopher . November 2021 . Strengthening Global Systems to Prevent and Respond to High-Consequence Biological Threats . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20220709012345/https://www.nti.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/NTI_Paper_BIO-TTX_Final.pdf . 2022-07-09 . 2022-07-09 . Nuclear Threat Initiative.