Newcleic itself emerged from Dr Beattie Melinek’s work on cell‑free DNA production within the Future Targeted Healthcare Manufacturing Hub, where she was supervised by Professor Dan Bracewell. Now leading the company as its solo founder, Beattie is supported by a small team and a group of scientific advisors that includes Professors Dan Bracewell and Chris Mason at UCL Biochemical Engineering, alongside Jonathan Jones and Wenbo Ma at TSL.

The company is tackling a well‑known bottleneck: conventional long‑DNA manufacturing is technically demanding, prone to failure, and environmentally burdensome. Newcleic aims to change that. By making long‑DNA production more reliable, simple, and sustainable, they hope to give plant breeders the tools they need to develop crop varieties that are more resilient to climate change, higher yielding, more land‑efficient, less resource‑intensive, and ultimately better able to support a diverse and secure food system.

The urgency of this challenge—and the broader need to accelerate agricultural innovation—is widely recognised by governments, agronomists, and environmental groups. In the UK, recent legislative changes are opening the door for breeders to use modern biotechnology more freely, enabling them to achieve outcomes that would otherwise require years of conventional breeding.

Support from the DEFRA‑funded Farming Futures grant will allow Newcleic to begin demonstrating the potential of their technology. UCL Biochemical Engineering will bring its bioprocess expertise to the project, analysing the current long‑DNA manufacturing landscape, identifying opportunities for improvement, and comparing the technical, economic, and environmental performance of Newcleic’s approach with existing methods. This work will help clarify where and how the technology can deliver the greatest impact.

Meanwhile, researchers at TSL will put the long DNA to the test in plant transformation experiments, using the project as an opportunity to advance and showcase some of their cutting‑edge concepts in pest‑resistant plant engineering.

“We’re deeply grateful to our collaborators, Defra, and Innovate UK for supporting this work,” said Dr Melinek. “Reliable, sustainable long‑DNA manufacturing has the potential to reduce pesticide use, support carbon‑capture crops, improve climate resilience, and strengthen food security—areas of growing global urgency.”

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