Ginkgo Bioworks
Boston, MA, USA
Summary
Horizontal platform; across cell type and industrial applications.
Codebase of DNA logic is derived undertaking projects, held as a unique proprietary database, can be leveraged in further application.
Focus on high throughput, parallel capabilities in design, generation, experimentation and testing enables the profiling of thousands of biological designs. Endpoint improvements are realised though this power of exploring a large combinatorial design space.
Range of services make up the foundry:
• Strain development
• Metabolic engineering
• Advanced compute and data
• Enzyme discovery
• Cell Engineering
• Pathway assembly
• High-throughput analytical assays
Leverage services through wide ranging partnerships:
• Fragrances - Robertet
• Programmable medicines - Synlogic
• Vaccines - Aldevron
• Agriculture, nitrogen fixation optimization - Agricultural Bayer
• Cannabinoid, enzyme Discovery - Cronos
• Foods, protein production - Motif Foodworks
• Biosecurity - Concentric
• Biosurveillance - IARPA
• Nucleic acid medicines
Marketing
Engineering living cells is hard–evolution is four billion years ahead of us, after all. At Ginkgo we’ve built our foundries and codebase so that we can better learn from and design with biology
In biological engineering, living organisms are the factories that build new products.
Designing the best organisms requires a different sort of factory, one where the best tools in automation, analytics, and software call all work in sync. The Bioworks foundries are automating and scaling the process of organism engineering, allowing engineers to prototype thousands of biological designs.
Integrated software and automated tools allow for scaling up our process while scaling down costs
At Ginkgo we are unifying these tools into a horizontal platform for programming cells across organisms. We make this platform available to customers who want to program cells for applications in food, medicine, cosmetics, agriculture, materials, or any other market
#Science
Foundry’s enzyme discovery, pathway assembly, and high-throughput analytical capabilities enable organism engineers to build complex metabolic pathways in microorganisms
The foundries allow organism designers to build and test many prototype enzyme pathways to hone in on the most effective design.
• Living organisms considered as factories to assemble products
• Teams optimise and design build those factories to grow more product
• During pathway optimisation the computation DNA design team generates libraries of 1000s pathway
• Organism engineers select and domestic right strain for job, yeast or bacteria or plant
• People, robots and software work together to compile digital code create DNA and transfer into cells
• Test to see what factories can do, which are best and progressed
• Analytic tools, assays and omics capabilities applied to characterise the organisms and enzymes
• Captured data about each gene enzyme and organism feeds back into code base
• Apply automated fermentation system to translate into pilot and commercial production
Network
| Direction | Partner | Type |
|---|---|---|
| To | Bolt Threads | Strain_Engineering |
| To | Motif | Bioinformatics |
Octant
Emeryville, CA, USA
Summary
Leveraging synthetic biology in-house as one of four advanced technologies being applied drug discovery
Attempting to decrypt the data-layer to explain the biochemical mechanisms between inputs and outputs of a cell.
In contrast to computer simulation, running “cellular intelligence”, that is considering the cell as a computational machine; actual physics parse the input to output
‘Monte-Carlo’ approach, a variety of mutations are applied and ran in parallel, data is generated, machine learning is leveraged to provide insight into the biochemical pathways and correspondingly options for therapeutics
Considering complex disease where insight previously not possible due to complexity and technology constraints.
Marketing
The next generation of medicine will require bold new approaches native to biology. We approach therapeutic problems through the massively parallel lenses of biology itself.
Society is swimming in genetic and clinical data, but we usually don’t understand the biochemical mechanisms that link the genetics to the disease. Octant engineers biology at massive scales to unlock that data layer and build novel treatments for the most complicated diseases.
We are building drugs with novel mechanisms of actions guided by massive datasets in engineered human cells that unlock insights between genetics, chemistry, biochemical function, and disease phenotypes. Our platform uses synthetic biology, high throughput multiplexed assays, synthetic chemistry, and computation to engineer and interrogate drugs, proteins, and signalling pathways at unprecedented scales
The four components of our platform enable experiments at the massive scale of computational simulations, but with gold-standard real-life experiments in human cells instead. By viewing the biology through this massively parallel experimental lens, we can see problems and solutions that otherwise can’t be seen. Cellular Intelligence unlocks completely new approaches that are more native to how biology actually manifests.
We focus on complex but genetically validated diseases that society is falling behind on. We’ve set out to tackle very hard problems in multi-factorial diseases.
N/A
#Science
HIGH THROUGHPUT SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY
We design, build and test millions of custom cell lines, each precisely engineered to measure the various biochemical activities of drug targets. We engineer these cells with genetic barcodes that measure for us what is happening in the cell.
HIGH THROUGHPUT CHEMISTRY
Nanomole-scale chemical synthesis brings together custom-designed chemical cores with tens of thousands of fragments to enable both exploration and subtle tuning of chemical space to
MULTIPLEXED ASSAY PLATFORM
All of this comes together on our massively parallel high throughput drug discovery platform. We iterate on thousands of genetic and chemical inputs to generate millions of biological outputs in human cells.
COMPUTATION
All of the above is enabled, processed, and accelerated by our advanced statistical and machine learning pipelines and tools.
Colorifix
Norwich, UK
Summary
Discover colours in nature
Apply DNA sequencing to find the genes encoding pigment expression
Engineered microorganism are provided to clients who ferment on site the microorganiism
Expressed dye is used directly in standard dye machines
Vastly reduced CO2, energy, water and use of toxic chemicals
Aim for economical competitiveness
Marketing
Colorifix minimises the environmental impact of industrial dyeing by replacing chemistry with biology at every step in the process, from the creation of the dyes to their fixation into fabrics
The microorganisms are fuelled by simple sugars, yeast, and plant-byproducts. What normally takes many petrochemicals, our dyes are produced using these clean, renewable feedstocks.
The microorganisms divide every 20 minutes, resulting in a large quantity of colourful dye liquor within just one or two days. This is then placed directly into standard dye machines, requiring no additional specialist equipment or toxic chemicals.
#Sustainability
The dyeing industry is one of the largest water consumers in the world, using over 5 trillion litres per year along with petrochemical dyes and a host of toxic and highly polluting chemicals
Compared to the conventional dyeing step for cotton, the Colorifix technology reduces water consumption by at least 49%, electricity by 35%, and CO₂ emissions by 31%.
Our dyes are produced, deposited and fixed onto fabrics without the need for heavy metals or organic solvents.
The Colorifix process works on a liquor-to-fabric ratio of 1:6 at a temperature of just 37 degrees, and instead of all of the standard auxiliary chemicals, it uses one non-toxic additive. By localising production of our liquor at or near the dye house itself, we further reduce transport costs and carbon emissions.
#Science
We find a colour created by an organism in nature— whether an animal, plant, insect or microbe. Via online DNA sequencing (never a physical specimen) we pinpoint the exact genes that lead to the production of the pigment and we then translate that DNA code into our microorganism. The resulting engineered microorganism can then produce the pigment just as it is produced in nature.
Colorifix relies on a GM process to make a non-GM product. This is an important distinction from many GM applications such as cotton or food where the modified organism is the product. In our case, we genetically engineer a microorganism to produce a naturally-occurring pigment and leverage a basic biological process to transfer that colour onto textiles. In the final stage of dyeing, we eliminate all live microorganisms through a validated inactivation step, resulting in a sterile, non-GM product.
Products
| Product | Organism | Type | Species |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dye Expressing Microbe | Unknown | Organism | Unknown |
Amyris
Emeryville, CA, USA
Summary
Lab-to-Market operating system has successfully produced genetically engineering molecules, bioidentical to those that exist in nature.
The synthetic biology platform can create any molecule that exists in nature.
Ingredient pipeline consists of hundred of thousands of molecules with diverse functionality that can be leveraged in novel applications
Thirteen ingredients already commercialised, continue to leverage the pipeline for exploring other molecules and applications.
Can access over half of all small molecule diversity in nature.
Ferment with sustainably-sourced sugarcane .
Ferementation process signfiicantly more environmentally friendly than enbcumant chemistry. Two ingredients, squalane and squalene are currently derived from deep sea shark livers, an unsustainable source.
Own brands and industry partnerships with a focus on clean chemistry
Marketing
As the world's leading manufacturer of sustainable ingredients made with synthetic biology, our technology allows millions of people, young and old, to enjoy environmentally-friendly products that are made with our sustainable ingredients.
Using sugarcane fermentation, we convert basic plant sugars into rare bioidentical molecules, essential ingredients and clean, effective everyday products. We are passionately pioneering the future of clean chemistry where people and planet can prosper.
We are the first synthetic biology company to successfully launch a family of clean consumer brands. The natural and sustainable ingredients we produce are the building blocks of our brands' products. Amyris' science and technology brings the benefits of our ingredients directly to consumers.
At the core of our value is our ability to develop molecules, manufacture them at scale and commercialize them with partners who are leaders in their markets. We are shifting the world to sustainable ingredients with our own family of brands and with our partners. Perhaps most compelling, as our success scales, so too do the positive effects on the planet.
Clean chemistry will continue to become a bigger component in applications for everyday consumer products as consumers continue to demand more natural and sustainable solutions. Our future growth is about more molecules, into more products and used at higher rates in each application.
#Sustainability
With our technology platform, we can offer better performing ingredients at a lower cost using a process that is far better for the environment. This is our Make Good. No Compromise® pledge that is delivering industry-leading growth and supporting the environmental goals of our customers.
We've set bold goals for our sustainability efforts. That's why we've made it a quantifiable part of the business and are publishing our inaugural Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) report this year. It serves as the baseline for measuring our progress and success in our sustainability journey
Bonsucro, a global non-profit organization, promotes sustainable sugarcane production, processing and trade. Amyris' feedstock source is sustainably harvested sugarcane, certified by Bonsucro
#Science
We use fermentation to deliver high-performing ingredients that are economical and sustainably-sourced. We were founded in 2003 with a vision to remake the world's chemistry using synthetic biology. We genetically engineer yeast and ferment it with sustainably-sourced sugarcane to produce natural, high-performance molecules.
Products
| Product | Organism | Type | Species |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sclareol | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| Hemisqualane | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| Manool | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| Santalols | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| Bisabolol | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| Biofene | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| Artemisinin | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| Silica | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| Squalane | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| Squalene | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| RebM | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| Patchouli | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
| Cannabigerol | Fungi | Chemical | Yeast |
Demetrix
Berkeley, CA, USA
Summary
Focus on the production of rare cannabinoids via fermentation of engineered yeast organism.
Cannabigerol is the first product being developed commerically for the skincare industry.
Fermentation method vastly reduces water consumption, land use and co2 emission vs traditional methods.
Purity is a competitive advantage vs plant extraction method.
Pipeline focus on non-psychoactive compounds.
Undertake research on over one hundred cannabinoids to understand thearepautic and cosmetic benefits.
Marketing
Demetrix uses cutting edge fermentation technology to produce rare cannabinoids that are safe, legal, and effective for health and wellness. Our ingredients are backed by science and tailored for beauty and personal care applications. Our team is comprised of industry-leading experts to ensure our products meet the strictest of standards. With deep experience using fermentation technology to create and bring products to market, we are committed to delivering a consistent, high purity supply of the active ingredients you need.
#Sustainability
Indoor cannabinoid production accounts for 1-2% of California's electricity? Although controllable, traditional methods can put a strain on the environment. Since rare cannabinoids are present at such low levels, the amount of land necessary would be tremendous. Fermentation is agnostic to the type of cannabinoid, and is also highly controllable, with a much less environmental footprint.
#Science
Cannabinoids are a class of compounds that are active in promoting health and wellness. Historically, they have been completely skipped over by modern research because of their prohibition. Now, Demetrix has reached the initial stage of a significant health and wellness game-changer with the promise of cannabinoids.
By understanding the activity of each cannabinoid, we can then study and apply our scientific discoveries to real-world solutions. Even the rarest cannabinoids can be produced at high purity and high volumes to improve lives around the world.
Products
| Product | Organism | Type | Species |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cannabigerol | Fungi | Bioactive | Yeast |
Impossible Foods
Redwood City, CA, USA
Summary
Make meat, dairy and fish from plants, flagship product, Impossible Burger.
Improved nutrition qualities no animal hormones antibiotics
Huge environment and sustainability benefits.
leghemoglobin is the chemical produced via fermentation after introducing the gene from soybean plants to genetically engineered yeast.
Marketing
What's the most effective way to reduce your environmental footprint? We'll give you a hint: It starts with your plate. That's right -- adjusting your diet can be better than getting solar panels, driving an electric car, or avoiding plastic straws. That's where Impossible Foods comes in. We make delicious meat, fish, and dairy products, from plants, so you can eat what you love, and save the planet that you love. Small actions lead to big change. Learn more about why we do what we do, and how you can take a bite out of it.
By eating meat made from plants instead of meat made from animals, we can drastically cut our carbon footprint, save water supplies and help ensure that our precious Earth is here not just tomorrow but for future generations. With Impossible Burger, it's never been more delicious to save the planet.
#Sustainability
Adjusting your diet can be better than getting solar panels, driving an electric car, or avoiding plastic straws. That's where Impossible Foods comes in. We make delicious meat, fish, and dairy products, from plants,
Findings show that choosing Impossible Burger over ground beef from cows uses 96% less land, generates 89% less of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, and uses 87% less water that's better left to nature and people. Additionally, the Impossible Burger has a 92% efficiency advantage over beef's contribution to aquatic pollution through nutrient runoff.
#Science
Heme is what makes meat taste like meat. It's an essential molecule found in every living plant and animal -- most abundantly in animals -- and something we've been eating and craving since the dawn of humanity. Here at Impossible Foods, our plant-based heme is made via fermentation of genetically engineered yeast
Products
| Product | Organism | Type | Species |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heme | Fungi | Protein | Yeast |
Bolt Threads
Emeryville, CA, USA
Summary
A materials solution company, developing b-silk protein, a soft powder for beauty and personal care products.
Express spider silk genes in yeast, brew the silk via fermentation, isolate, purify.
Biodegradable benefits compared with existing chemistry, reduced pollution and energy requirements during manufacture.
Products are currently in the research and development phase.
Leveraging strain engineering capabilities from Ginkgo Bioworks to improve their production efficiency of b-silk protein and to scaling the protein for more mass availability.
Marketing
Bolt Threads is a material solutions company. With nature as our inspiration, we invent cutting-edge materials for the fashion and beauty industries to put us on a path toward a more sustainable future.
Through innovative collaborations with world-class brands and supply chain partners, we are on a mission to create way better materials for a way better world.
B silk is a versatile biomaterial made with renewable inputs - sugar, water, and yeast - that offers a myriad of applications in beauty, textiles, biomedicine, and more.
Inspired by the strength and elasticity of spider silk, b-silk protein is a patented clean beauty breakthrough available to the beauty and personal care industries.
#Sustainability
We are inspired by nature's circular and efficient processes to consider every aspect of the life cycle - all production inputs, energy and water use, and product end-of-life. Our goal is not just one improvement, but reduced environmental impact and positive social change throughout the whole process.
B-silk protein is made using simple inputs like water, sugar, yeast, and salt. The resulting protein is EWG verified to meet strict safety standards and Leaping Bunny Certified to be cruelty-free.
#Science
B-silk is a biobased, biodegradable, and vegan polypeptide that has been shown to outperform silicone elastomers in beauty and personal care products.
We study silk proteins spun by spiders to determine what gives them their incredible properties.like strength and softness
Inspired by these natural silks, we bioengineered yeast to produce b-silk protein.
We develop proteins inspired by these natural silks by bioengineering genes into yeast.
We produce the protein in large quantities through fermentation using yeast, sugar, and water.
We isolate and purify the silk protein powder to use in a variety of applications.
B-silk protein has a unique molecular structure that acts as a weightless defense system against environmental aggressors (like pollution and blue light). B-silk protein is clinically proven to physically defend skin and hair and mitigate these negative effects in a variety of applications.
Network
| Direction | Partner | Type |
|---|---|---|
| From | Ginkgo Bioworks | Strain_Engineering |
Products
| Product | Organism | Type | Species |
|---|---|---|---|
| B-Silk | Fungi | Protein | Yeast |
Pivot Bio
Berkeley, CA, USA
Summary
Significant future challenge for feeding an increasing human population, current population could not be sustained without fertiliser.
Extreme environmental impacts from the current process for fertiliser production energy, co2, nitrous oxide, water pollution, phosphate reserve depletion.
Poor performance, significant lost of fertiliser due to volatilization and leaching, high variability dependent on topology and weather.
Solution is to directly apply to the soil microbes that produce nitrogenase, an enzyme that takes nitrogen from the atmosphere and converts it to ammonia, which the plants can take up directly
This natural ability of soil microbes for fixing nitrogen has been lost since the introduction of fertiliser.
Technology developed to reverse engineer the DNA software and re-engineer the microbes to reestablish this capability.
Marketing
Solved one of the toughest challenges facing modern agriculture - how to replace synthetic nitrogen with something better. Our microbes empower the world's farmers to be more productive, profitable, and sustainable.
Pivot Bio has focused on developing its proprietary microbial technology that supplies the daily nitrogen cereal crops require.
Pivot Bio microbes are specially designed to work on cereal crops, some of the most nitrogen hungry crops we grow. Corn, wheat, and rice account for about half of the applied synthetic nitrogen globally.
This nitrogen is transferred directly to the plant. These nutrients aren't degraded which means virtually no pollution from volatilization and leaching.
#Sustainability
Without fertiliser, the world's food production would be cut by 48%. By 2050, growers will have to provide 56% more calories to the world to feed a population that nears 10 billion.
Growers rely on synthetic fertiliser to supplement soil nitrogen and boost yields, but this input negatively impacts our environment in two ways. First, it consumes substantial non-renewable energy sources to create both the intense heat and pressure required for production and provide the necessary elements of the reaction Second, synthetic nitrogen fertiliser is quickly lost to the environment through volatilization and leaching.
Ammonia production consumes 3% of the world's energy, and invasive mining has nearly stripped the world of its phosphate reserves.
Once produced, a small portion of chemical fertiliser decomposes into nitrous oxide and becomes a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than CO2. It's responsible for about 5% of global warming.
In addition, rains wash excess fertiliser into streams and rivers, causing algal blooms that suffocate fish and aquatic life.
Our microbes can be grown on sugar and water with next to no carbon emissions, and the nitrogen they produce stays at the root of the plant where it belongs.
This fermentation replaces the Haber-Bosch Process, the energy-intense production process for creating synthetic nitrogen, and reduces potential GHG emissions by 98%.
#Science
Some soil microbes can break down atmospheric nitrogen and create a usable form for plants. However, that inherent ability has been rendered dormant by a century of synthetic chemical fertiliser use. Pivot Bio is able to improve the ability of microbes to break down that atmospheric nitrogen and change it into a usable form by activating their own DNA.
We map trillions of interactions between living organisms in the soil to identify the rare microbes with the right internal DNA software to produce nitrogen.
We've developed a powerful technology called computationally-guided microbe remodelling.
We reverse engineer the DNA software that makes each microbe tick, and we evaluate billions of ways to reprogram the genetic blueprint to improve how much nitrogen each microbe produces.
Sensing the nutrient needs of the crop, our reprogrammed microbes reliably produce the right levels of nitrogen in any weather and throughout the growing season.
Products
| Product | Organism | Type | Species |
|---|---|---|---|
| ProveN | Bacteria | Organism | Gammaproteobacteria |