4 ms·

These guys have been on a major PR push for a little while. The business model and technology sound fantastic, and the potential applications really are numerou

These guys have been on a major PR push for a little while. The business model and technology sound fantastic, and the potential applications really are numerous. I find the notion that ‘anything’ can be commercially produced by synbio dubious (think gold or uranium) but the range of applications in the organic space seem vast. Does anybody have the relevant background to reliably comment on the cost efficiency/R&D timelines/scalability of these kinds of projects?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
a_bonobo 7y ago
I work in bioinformatics, not syn-bio, but I have friends working in syn-bio. I first wanted to go into syn-bio during my undergrad days (about 13 years ago?) since then all the exciting things were happening, logical gates, fine-grain control of E. coli etc. When I look at what my friends are working on nothing much has changed? We can have simple AND gates in plants now, not just bacteria, but that's where it already stops. Anything more complex still doesn't work. A lot of progress has been made in DNA synthesis, creation of new DNA instructions, 'printing' DNA?, we can write entire chromosomes now. Delineating 'synthetic biology' from good old biotechnology is hard though :) A lot of the progress I see that gets chalked up to syn-bio feels more like regular biotechnology: getting known genes together into bacteria to produce chemicals. We've been doing that for a long time in insulin, washing powder, all kinds of medicines, all on industrial scale, it's where your insulin comes from. To me syn-bio means to create entirely novel genes/pathways, not just re-using what nature has to offer, there was lots of fun progress here (artificial genetic codes, for example), but nothing that has made it out of the lab. So Gingko's success happens in (to me!!!!) good old microbiology, taking genes that already exist and putting them into bacteria: 'Our first customers were in the fragrance industry. You get mint oil from mint leaves. We would take the genes from mint by reading the DNA code of the mint plant, find the part of it that encodes the mint flavor, print out the code from the mint plant, redesign it a little bit, move it into brewer’s yeast—like you use to make beer. ' That's not different from insulin production, and we've been doing that (well!) for thirty years or so. Same goes for Gingko's CBD production, we know a lot about that pathway already, and moving it into bacteria for easier production isn't impossible, I'd say feasible within the next 5 to 10 years. Now making truly artificial synthetic biology, new genes, new pathways, logical switches, I'd say that's another 40-50 years until yo use that on industrial scale.
- mogadsheu 7y ago
  >Gingko's success happens in (to me!!!!) good old microbiology, taking genes that already exist and putting them into bacteria My intuition suggests the same... although it’s based on high school AP bio plus conversations/reading. Any thoughts on cost efficiency? Is there some Gibbs free energy or other principle that would prevent it from ever being commercially feasible?
  - a_bonobo 7y ago
    Regular biotech is already very cost-efficient, it's just a matter of putting the gene in, not breaking anything, and then optimising the hell out of the protocol (optimising temperature, pressure, nutrient mix etc. in your bioreactors). For synthetic biology, I have no idea why this is not commercially feasible. We probably oversimplify the cell's system too much, so that introducing a multi-level computer breaks things we don't know about? But I'm purely speculating.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

a_bonobo 7y ago

I work in bioinformatics, not syn-bio, but I have friends working in syn-bio. I first wanted to go into syn-bio during my undergrad days (about 13 years ago?) since then all the exciting things were happening, logical gates, fine-grain control of E. coli etc. When I look at what my friends are working on nothing much has changed? We can have simple AND gates in plants now, not just bacteria, but that's where it already stops. Anything more complex still doesn't work. A lot of progress has been made in DNA synthesis, creation of new DNA instructions, 'printing' DNA?, we can write entire chromosomes now. Delineating 'synthetic biology' from good old biotechnology is hard though :) A lot of the progress I see that gets chalked up to syn-bio feels more like regular biotechnology: getting known genes together into bacteria to produce chemicals. We've been doing that for a long time in insulin, washing powder, all kinds of medicines, all on industrial scale, it's where your insulin comes from. To me syn-bio means to create entirely novel genes/pathways, not just re-using what nature has to offer, there was lots of fun progress here (artificial genetic codes, for example), but nothing that has made it out of the lab. So Gingko's success happens in (to me!!!!) good old microbiology, taking genes that already exist and putting them into bacteria: 'Our first customers were in the fragrance industry. You get mint oil from mint leaves. We would take the genes from mint by reading the DNA code of the mint plant, find the part of it that encodes the mint flavor, print out the code from the mint plant, redesign it a little bit, move it into brewer’s yeast—like you use to make beer. ' That's not different from insulin production, and we've been doing that (well!) for thirty years or so. Same goes for Gingko's CBD production, we know a lot about that pathway already, and moving it into bacteria for easier production isn't impossible, I'd say feasible within the next 5 to 10 years. Now making truly artificial synthetic biology, new genes, new pathways, logical switches, I'd say that's another 40-50 years until yo use that on industrial scale.

mogadsheu 7y ago
>Gingko's success happens in (to me!!!!) good old microbiology, taking genes that already exist and putting them into bacteria My intuition suggests the same... although it’s based on high school AP bio plus conversations/reading. Any thoughts on cost efficiency? Is there some Gibbs free energy or other principle that would prevent it from ever being commercially feasible?
- a_bonobo 7y ago
  Regular biotech is already very cost-efficient, it's just a matter of putting the gene in, not breaking anything, and then optimising the hell out of the protocol (optimising temperature, pressure, nutrient mix etc. in your bioreactors). For synthetic biology, I have no idea why this is not commercially feasible. We probably oversimplify the cell's system too much, so that introducing a multi-level computer breaks things we don't know about? But I'm purely speculating.