🧬 Synthesizing SynBio x Climate #011

programming biology for climate with Austin Che, co-founder of Gingko Bioworks

TLDR: Synthetic biology makes it possible to program living organisms to do what we want. By engineering biology, we can replace the conventional means of production which is largely energy-intensive, petroleum-based, and greenhouse gas emitting. But we’re just getting started, according to Austin Che, co-founder of Gingko Bioworks.

Thus far, human civilization has continued to advance through increasing novel ways of combining and transforming existing resources into more useful products. Gasoline, plastic, and fertilizer were once (literally) ground-breaking inventions. Now we take it all for granted. We should acknowledge the technological and societal progress built off fossil fuels, but we also need to move on.

By delaying the tangible environmental symptoms from extracting resources into the future, our ancestors were morally freed to pursue progress without having to think about the long-term consequences. I don’t blame them though. If I didn’t have to deal with the repercussions, I would also get around via gas-powered car instead of horse-drawn buggy.

Prior generations observed the limitations of the natural world and took matters into their own hands by plundering and pillaging rainforests, oceans, and petroleum reservoirs. Less than 200 years later, we’re attempting the opposite. We’ve recognized the limits of man-made machinery that runs off finite resources and are embracing the regenerative natural world again. We’re programming biology to do what we thought it could never do.

Biology is the most powerful manufacturing platform

Let’s start off with a brief refresher on high school biology. Every living thing is made up of DNA, the software of life. Upon closer inspection, every ribbon of DNA is composed of nucleotide base pairs. Similarly, computer code is just a sequence of words that can be broken down into individual characters. Both systems of code can be broken down into the atomic units.

In DNA, it’s the four nucleotides: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). In software, it’s binary: 1s and 0s. While the names and properties might differ, both share a programmable -and therefore - transmutable nature. This revelation is what led researchers and engineers to ask: What if we could program DNA like code?

The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal. - Richard Dawkins

But first, we needed a couple technological breakthroughs. In 1973, we got molecular cloning; allowing us to copy-and-paste DNA on a one-to-one basis. A decade later, PCR was invented, unlocking DNA replication at a one-to-many scale. With just a tiny sample, billions of copies could be produced, arguably resulting in the creation of the biotech industry.

As the cost to write specific DNA at scale declined, so did the ability to read, or sequence, entire DNA sets. Since 2001, the cost to sequence became 100,000x cheaper, even exceeding the trajectory of Moore’s Law:

The convergence in biology and computing is unfolding now. It’s only a matter of time before we can fully harness “the only functioning nanotechnology that we know of: living systems”. Armed with the triple-threat technological toolkit of measurement, modification, and mass-production, the field of synthetic biology was born.

Okay cool, but how is this relevant in climate?

As consumers living in the 21st century, we have access to the largest set of products ever in existence, but we also have the luxury of not having to know how those items are made. Whether it’s steak wrapped in saran wrap at the grocery store or stretchy Lululemon pants, the modes of manufacturing are abstracted away from us. We don’t need to slaughter the animal or drill the crude oil ourselves. But if we start to channel that long lost childlike curiosity like asking mommy and daddy how babies are made, then we arrive at a shocking finding: all these nice things are made from finite, GHG-emitting, raw materials.

It’s the petroleum industry’s world, we’re just living in it.

Trying to live a life without petroleum would be quite the sight because you would have to walk around naked everywhere. Yeah you read that right. Tires for cars are made from rubber and our clothes are made from synthetic fabrics like polyester, nylon and spandex.

It’s hard to picture a world where we collectively give up modern conveniences like toothbrushes, electronics, and medical devices. Then that leads to an interesting thought: What if we hold the end product constant and examine alternative means of production? How can we produce useful things like plastics, fertilizer, textiles, and consumer goods without relying on petroleum as the starting point? How can we make energy-intensive processes like agriculture more efficient and yield generating?

It turns out this is exactly where synthetic biology comes in. By decoding proteins that are traditionally found in animals, we now have cheese with casein and beef with heme (the thing that makes meat bleed), completely plant-based. Zero waste and zero footprint fertilizers are being developed to replace the standard nitrogen-based ones (2.5% of global emissions).

Within materials, there are upgraded, synbio versions of plastics, leather, and even wood being developed. These are just some examples of how synthetic biology is unlocking new ways to make things. There are even some folks working on methane-eating bacteria. If we can engineer biology to produce what we want, perhaps it’s possible for it to remove what we don’t want?

But rather than continuing this monologue of how synthetic biology will transform climate, I sat down with Austin Che, co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks (the largest synthetic biology company), to learn more.

Interview with Austin Che, Co-founder and Head of Strategy at Ginkgo Bioworks

The following interview with Austin Che is intended for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. The information provided in this interview is based on publicly available information and the interviewee's personal views. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with a financial professional before making any investment decisions.

This transcription has been lightly edited for clarity and to remove any unnecessary elements. However, the content of the interview has not been altered in any way that would change its meaning.

Could you describe in your own words what Ginkgo Bioworks does and what you focus on nowadays?

What we do at Ginkgo is program cells. We re-engineer DNA and bring new functionalities to organisms. And so our view is that just like computers are programmable, biology is programmable. We can harness the capabilities of biology for human purposes. We're working with customers in all sorts of industries. We think that some bio could touch any industry that's physical, like it's basically programming matter, moving atoms around. Biology is the most complicated and global example of moving items around. We have customers in traditional bio areas like pharma, therapeutics and food and ag and so forth. But there are also materials, chemicals, in climate, in many different areas. I think the possibilities have just started. We haven't really tapped all the potential biology yet.

What do you think is the primary bottleneck right now?

I think our bottleneck is our understanding. Right now, even the most complicated thing we do is like tinkering with what nature has given us. And 99% is what's out there and we are just making small modifications. We don't really understand or we can't build from the ground up a new organism. So I think we're still in the play phase of understanding what we can do because we just don't know how to engineer things. Like the design part, like figuring out how to, how to do it. The way we are programming is sort of like the Stack Overflow type programmer. You're just searching for a snippet here and there and you copy and paste and that's it. We don't actually understand how to make something that well.

Why are all of these things converging in 2023? What needs to happen over the next five, ten years to continue this trajectory of change?

I think we are getting real good at the underlying, like reading and writing of DNA. The challenge is what to write, right? And so it's the design tools, it's the smarts, the intelligence, the training of the equivalent of programmers.

None of that exists. The art of programming biology is in infancy. Just because we can do it, doesn't mean we know how to do it. Some of that is collecting data, just trying and failing and learning, and that's Ginkgo's model. Our foundation is - we don't believe that you could yet have a black box software or even a person that just says “design something” and it works the first time.

It's not at the level of designing a bridge or complicated electronics or aircraft or like things that just work the first time. They have enough tools that even though they're very complicated, they know it'll work. In biology, we have to try a bunch of things and learn from it. And so that's why we built out the physical infrastructure to try lots of experiments and hopefully learn from that.

In terms of knowing what to program, would you say right up until now, the things that are being produced using Ginkgo's technology are a one-to-one swap out of existing products? By looking at what materials made expensively or inefficiently and then trying to find better ways to make them?

Some of our projects are direct replacements. We have projects to make a variety of chemicals. We have projects like replacing fertilizer. But there are also things that you couldn't do otherwise. We have a project in therapeutics to engineer your gut microbiome to have a therapeutic effect. And it's actually completely different than any replacement. It's a completely different modality for delivering a therapeutic to just engineer microbes.

And I think generally, live microbe applications is gonna be different. There's the category of using the microbe as a factory, where at the end of the day, the microbe doesn't exist anymore. So whatever product you're making may just be a dropdown replacement for whatever that already exists, or maybe a new, new thing. But at the end of the day, it's just a factory. It's just a tool.

And then there's the class of things where the organism is the product. And that's a new class of things which we don't really see otherwise elsewhere. It's living. Like what if our buildings were alive? What if things that we're creating were all alive and could adapt and heal and have all the properties of organisms? How would that change things? Does that open up new applications?

Last one - you started Ginkgo back in 2008. It seems like you're still cranking on this multi-decade long vision. I'm curious what keeps you going these days?

We haven't achieved it. Our vision is to make bio easier to engineer. I would say it's still not there. We have a much greater scale than when we started, but we've been talking about it -  it just still feels like we're just banging on the keyboard and hoping something good comes out. I would like to see you guys get to a much more rationally engineerable place where you can do cool stuff.

Back to Synbio x Climate

Synbio’s role in climate is just starting to play out. Starting in 2010, companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods were formed, but there’s clearly still a long way to go with displacing the meat industry. A few years later, another wave was born, focusing on producing chemicals, textiles, and foods with engineered biology. While the first two waves are still playing out, a third wave is starting to form in synbio x climate: carbon dioxide removal. One day we may just be able to engineer living organisms to eat carbon dioxide and methane.

Actually that’s already happening today. Solugen, a $1.8B Houston based startup, builds biology-powered facilities that use enzymes (instead of petroleum) to produce a variety of chemicals. Their pitch to MIT’s Entrepreneurship Competition sums it up well: We use enzyme engineering to convert CO2 into high value chemicals. Even attempting to bucket the startup into climate tech vs. synbio vs. chemical manufacturing would be futile because in reality it’s all of the above. Although time will tell, Solugen’s strategy in competing directly on performance, price, and safety is what all climate companies should be striving for - avoiding the green premium and winning because of a superior product.

For further reading check out 1) CTVC’s interview with the founders and 2) Elliot Hershberg’s recap on his visit to Solugen HQ.

Something that Austin touched on in the interview is the reality that these nascent technologies all need to serve a market. Right now in climate, it’s hard to say how big or serious the market is, compared to the tried-and-true therapeutics industry (making drugs is lucrative). Merely solving for feasibility is not nearly enough. Bringing synbio x climate to life requires the crafty coordination of talent, capital, and policy.

Conclusion

I resonate with Elliot Hershberg’s framing of synbio’s orientation towards progress and abundance rather than stagnation and degrowth:

Synthetic biology is a technological discipline. It is also a philosophical and aesthetic preference towards green. In a world where people are asking themselves whether it is worth having children given their eventual carbon footprint, biotechnologists are thinking of ways to mitigate climate change and grow more life in the universe instead of less. Instead of moving increasingly inwards into the world of bits, partnering with biology offers the potential to realize abundance in the world of atoms.

Just as we can study history as a way to explore human nature, we can examine biology to find new means of production. Living systems are the most complex form of technology in existence and wrangling this biological code will usher in a new paradigm of manufacturing. And from chatting with Austin, it seems like we’re just getting started. 🔬🧪🧬🌍