In March of this year at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin Texas, an open science website took home the first prize in the Innovative Technologies category.
Synbiota is an online platform of tools for researchers anywhere in the world to collaborate on synthetic biology projects. This year the platform has launched a new project called #ScienceHack. Here to tell us about the project is Synbiota’s CEO and co-founder, Connor Dickie.
Podcast Sponsor:Integrated DNA Technologies - providing custom double-stranded gBlocks Gene Fragments of up to 2 kb, for easy gene construction.
If we have celebrities in the life science industry, George Church of Harvard is one of them. Author, professor, entrepreneur, advisor—the list goes on and on. One of the special things about George is his commitment to advocate for science to the larger community. With everything else he has going on, he makes time to talk on programs like ours.
We launched Mendelspod with a George Church interview. Three years later, it’s a treat to have him on again to talk about his work, career, philosophy, and take a few questions from the audience.
Thanks to IDT for underwriting this show.
Podcast Sponsor:Integrated DNA Technologies - providing custom double-stranded gBlocks Gene Fragments of up to 2 kb, for easy gene construction.
DNA. It’s at the core of biology and the life science industry. Integrated DNA Technologies, or IDT has been making DNA for the industry for twenty five years.
Mendelspod has been working for some time now to persuade someone from IDT to come on the program and tell us about their history--how they began, why they're in Coralville, Iowa, and what important trends they're observing.
Beginning a new series entitled Beyond the Oligo, we’re joined by IDT’s Chief Operating Officer, Trey Martin, for a wide ranging discussion about the company beginnings and their unique perspective on a rapidly changing industry.
Further episodes of this series will feature some of IDT's customers-from clinical genomics to synthetic biology-who are using DNA to pioneer dramatic new advances in human health and the way we are moving forward as a species.
Podcast brought to you by: Chempetitive Group - "We love science. We love marketing. We love the idea of combining the two to make great things happen for your marketing communications."
Deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA. We can read it. We can write it. It’s been the foundation of life for billions of years. Surely there’s lots of money to be made with it, right?
Listen (4:06)Highlights of upcoming SynBioBeta conference
Joining us to kick off a new SynBio Series is John Cumbers, founder of SynBioBeta. Cumbers and his team puts on the annual conference for the synthetic biology community in San Francisco each year. The next one is scheduled for Nov 15, 2013. In today's show, John previews the upcoming conference and reviews some of the events of the past year: the Intrexon IPO, the crowdfunded Glowing Plants Project, and other happenings in this exciting space.
Podcast brought to you by: Chempetitive Group - "We love science. We love marketing. We love the idea of combining the two to make great things happen for your marketing communications."
Submitted by Ayanna Monteverdi on Thu, 05/16/2013 - 16:05
Podcast brought to you by: Chempetitive Group - Who for more than a decade has helped science-based companies build and execute innovative marketing campaigns. "We love science. We love marketing. We love the idea of combining the two to make great things happen for your marketing communications."
There’s a new synthetic biology project attracting a lot of attention over at kickstarter. With the title: Glowing Plants: Natural Lighting with no Electricity, the project has already over 5,000 backers and has raised over $300,000. Will this be a great way to introduce synthetic biology to the larger public and inspire others to do similar projects? Here to talk about the goal and details of Glowing Plants is project leader, Antony Evans.
We hear a lot about how DNA sequencing is changing the world. Our ability to read the code of life is taking us a level deeper in our understanding of the human body and of the other life forms around us. Sequencing is all about “reading.” Occasionally, not very often, we’ll get someone to the program who talks about “writing” the code of life. Isn’t this where we’re going? To a world where, OK, now we understand the code, let’s write our own.
Timothy S. Gardner, PhD, Director, Research Programs and Operations, Amyris Inc. Bio and contact Info
Chapters: (Advance the marker)
0:00 John Cumbers talks about SynBioBeta, the new conference for synthetic biology startups.
14:51 Tim Gardner discusses Amyris biofuels program and the diversification of the industry.
We hear a lot about how DNA sequencing is changing the world. Our ability to read the code of life is taking us a level deeper in our understanding of the human body and of the other life forms around us. Sequencing is all about “reading.” Occasionally, not very often, we’ll get someone to the program who talks about “writing” the code of life. Isn’t this where we’re going? To a world where, OK, now we understand the code, let’s write our own. Yes, nature has given us an incomprehensible diversity of food and materials to make us happy. But now we’re graduating from the class of reading, of using and at times manipulating what’s already there, to the class of writing where we make new life forms which can do even more for us.
Ask any scientist what synthetic biology is, and you’ll get just as many answers as you do to the question, who/what is God. Last week I attended the inaugural conference for synthetic biology entrepreneurs, the SynBioBeta conference held in Menlo Park, CA. (The site will be a resource for synbio startups and stay up through the year.) For today’s show, I interviewed the founder and creator of the conference, John Cumbers, and the Director of Research Programs at Amyris, Tim Gardner, a speaker at the event. Listen to their interviews to see how they define synthetic biology.
“Biology is just another code,” we heard mid-morning from Omri Amirav-Drory. He’s the founder of Genome Compiler Corp, a new venture developing the software that really democratizes creation itself. With his software, you can go in and build a genome. That’s all. I’d like some of this, some of that, and a few of those, please. With a few of these thrown in for good measure. It appears the path to the future will also be a matter of what we sit and do every day: cut, copy, and paste. With colored boxes for different genes, the software looks so simple that even I could build myself a cute little genome.
It’s easy to see at the SynBioBeta how the imagination can take flight into a world of synthetic possibilities. And some of this field belongs to what Tim Gardner from Amyris calls the “sci-fi crowd.
“Well, if you’re not in the sci-fi crowd, which crowd are you in?” I ask Gardner as we walk to a quiet room to record his interview.
“My passion comes in working on problems that we face now, everyday. At Amyris we’re working for the day when you can pull your car up to the gas station and choose biofuel as an option, at no more expense than the current market price.” Gardner’s low key manner grounds his practical approach. (For more about Amyris, see the interview.)
Slide from John Cumbers' Presentation at SynBioBeta
Other highlights from the show for me were first, the explosion of startups in the field. To begin the conference, Cumbers put up a slide showing, with a virtually exponential curve, the number of synbio startups over the last few years. I asked several of the founders whether synthetic biology was more some answers looking for solutions. It was evident from the presentations that to succeed many of these fledgling companies had pivoted at least once to new markets. Company founders replied that it would go back and forth. They entered into a project via one application, found a technology, then when the first application didn’t work out, looked around for another way to commercialize. In the case of Amyris, they are going into a range of markets, from fuels to perfumes, all with just one molecule.
Cumbers says that we’re seeing the transition synthetic biology is making from being pretty much exclusively research to the commercial world.
Michael Koeris is a co-founder of Sample6 Technologies based in Boston. “We had to pivot twice, now it looks like it’s working,” the entrepreneur told me at the break. The company is engineering viruses that attack bacteriophages to detect bacterial contamination in agricultural applications. Michael’s colleage, Tim Lu, another co-founder was profiled in this BBC article earlier in the year.
I found the panel on CAD tools for synbio most intriguing. Carlos Alguin from Autodesk Research spoke. His company is responsible for a great deal of 3D modeling, including the work for the blockbuster movie, Avatar. It wasn’t clear how Autodesk’s platform would practically aid the synbio businesses in the room, but this is was not a conference about connecting every dot on the spot.
“What will the next generation of designers be able to do when they grow up with these tools,” Carlos provoked the crowd. It’s a great question.
Submitted by Theral Timpson on Thu, 10/18/2012 - 08:42
Podcast brought to you by: Chempetitive Group - Who for more than a decade has helped science-based companies build and execute innovative marketing campaigns. "We love science. We love marketing. We love the idea of combining the two to make great things happen for your marketing communications."
6:56 Why hasn't gene synthesis progressed along with sequencing?
10:14 Looking at the market: applications for synthetic biology
15:29 Educating the market the biggest challenge
19:01 PR efforts going into biosecurity
25:07 Personal path to Gen9
As part of our series on synthetic biology, we talk with Kevin Munnelly, CEO of Gen9, a new gene synthesis company founded by George Church of Harvard, Joseph Jacobson of MIT, and Drew Endy of Stanford. According to Munnelly, Gen9 is not just another gene synthesis company, but one which will dramatically disrupt the space. The theory is that just as the declining cost of sequencing has enabled new applications for genomics, so too will a drastically reduced price for synthetic genes. Kevin believes we are just at the beginning of a synthetic biology revolution and it's new technology such as his that will enable it. What are these new applications and why hasn't gene synthesis kept pace with sequencing we ask Kevin in today's show.
Listen (5:13) Has open science really taken off in the life sciences?
