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We hope this finds you well.
Dr. Jonas Salk, noted virologist and discoverer of the world-changing polio vaccine, once said, "Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality." In today’s war-torn world, fraught with economic difficulties and a topsy-turvy stock market, we at Built With Biology believe there is hope: an enduring, steadfast, deep-set belief in you, the people and companies using biology to make the planet a better place.
Witness the vast strides being made by companies like Molecular Assemblies, who are only months away from leveraging their DNA enzymatic synthesis capabilities to enable game-changing advances in medicine and therapeutics development. Consider Polybion, who ingeniously turn agro-industrial fruit waste into sustainable leather alternatives, reducing our dependence on the water-consuming and air-polluting industrial livestock industry. Or Conagen, who through their partnership with Blue
California, organically produce (at scale) the natural antioxidants found in olive oil and red wine (again reducing the need for water and arable soil).
In our opinion, hope is positively infectious, in that we can both catch it and spread it. We at Built With Biology celebrate the advances you (our partners) are making… and we look forward to celebrating with you in only four weeks at our live global conference!
Larry
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Larry Upton
Editor in Chief
larry.upton@builtwithbiology.com
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Only four weeks away… sign up now!
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Built With Biology Insights |
Re-thinking Efficiency
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Efficiency has been the watchword for business for quite a while, but these days it has some stiff competition from robustness and resilience. That’s because businesses that are surviving this volatile world are thinking more biologically… and biology prizes the capacity to adapt and grow over the capacity to maximize output.
Even more of a challenge to mindsets obsessed with precision and productivity, biology operates under a big umbrella. In the living world, if it’s working, then it works. This is true regardless of how inefficient it may seem to a scientist trying to impose a human understanding of function on other living systems - or a start-up
looking to scale up.
The biological mindset and legacy engineering mindsets can be at odds in surprising ways. A recent Scientific American article described salamanders as organisms with "shoddy construction," "sluggardly tendencies," and "anatomic distortions." They even went so far as to title the article "Junk DNA Deforms Salamander Bodies"!
It's true that salamanders are not going to win prizes for being the fastest, the strongest, or most drought tolerant organism. But life is about winning your category, not someone else's. Biologically speaking, soft-bodied salamanders seem to be doing just fine. They emerged early on in the history of vertebrates. If one is evaluating organisms based on fitness, the salamander's 200 million year run seems like a decent contender.
Organisms that have evolved in different environments excel at different functions and adapt in different ways. As we evolve our understanding of the role of DNA beyond the
simplistic "instructions for proteins," we are better able to understand the way living things regulate themselves in response to their environment and their needs. A more nuanced view of the way DNA, RNA, and proteins interact with one another is essential as we begin to build an abundant future with biology.
The stories we tell about biology don’t have to be limited to incomplete analogies and old ways of thinking. We can integrate a more flexible understanding of biological molecules and the adaptability of living systems to share narratives that respect the unique capacity of each organism to engage with its environment. Built With Biology is here to help tell these new narratives, embracing the diversity of the natural world and the multitude of solutions to be found within it.
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Spotlight on: HBBE |
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Billions of people live in Earth’s cities and more come every year. But building new homes, offices, and roads pollutes and damages our environment. So what if we could build cities with biology instead? Meet HBBE, the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment, a research collaboration between Northumbria and Newcastle universities in the UK. HBBE’s work focuses on leveraging biology to create sustainable solutions at city scales. Imagine using naturally fire-resistant mycelium as insulation in your home or laying self-healing, microbe-based concrete foundations in our schools. Part of HBBE’s work aims on bringing these kinds of living materials to life. Learn more about HBBE’s groundbreaking research and see what our future cities could be like!
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Spotlight on: CATALOG |
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Storing our digital lives requires unsustainable physical infrastructure and energy consumption. But electronics don’t need to be our only way of storing data. Meet CATALOG, a company
storing data in life’s original code: DNA. DNA is highly stable and can store tremendous amounts of information for thousands of years. By stringing together specific DNA sequences like lego blocks, CATALOG translates electronic 1s and 0s into genetic As,Ts,Cs,Gs. While we won’t have DNA hard drives for a long time, we can use synthetic DNA to search data sets and compute solutions to traditionally intractable problems. Learn more about CATALOG’s goals of building
sustainable data storage and get a preview of what our data futures could look like!
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Genomatica and Asahi Kasei partner on renewably-sourced nylon 6,6 |
Asahi Kasei intends to apply the GENO™ HMD process technology to make more sustainable materials for use in products such as high-temperature automotive parts, electronics, or yarns to produce airbags.
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Conagen develops novel high-performing debondable adhesives from natural ingredients |
Conagen has solved the challenges manufacturers face in seeking strong structural adhesives that are long-lasting, perform strongly, and have the valuable option for breaking the adhesion before final finishing operations to deliver perfect products.
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Molecular Assemblies announces $25.8 million Series B financing to initiate key customer program for commercial access to fully enzymatic DNA synthesis |
The Fully Enzymatic Synthesis™ technology is designed to overcome the length, purity, and accuracy limitations of the chemical DNA synthesis method.
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Major CRISPR patent decision won’t end tangled dispute |
Fights over who invented the gene-editing technology are becoming more complex, and could carry on for years.
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Polybion completes development of world’s first bacterial cellulose biomanufacturing facility
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Demetrix initiates 2022 commercial manufacturing campaign
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DNA Script named #3 on the Fast Company List of "The 10 Most Innovative Biotech Companies of 2022"
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Ginkgo Bioworks to acquire FGen AG, a leading bioengineering company and its proprietary ultra-high-throughput screening platform
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Reading »
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Strateos expands leadership team to meet increasing customer demand for its remote access laboratories and lab automation software
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Berkeley Lights announces appointment of Dr. Siddhartha Kadia as Chief Executive Officer
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Keep Reading »
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WHO'S HIRING?
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Scientific Project Manager, Inscripta, Boulder, CO, Pleasanton, CA, or San Diego, CA.
Director/Senior Director, Mammalian Cell Biology, Inscripta, Boulder, CO
Field Service Engineer/ Senior Field Service Engineer, Inscripta, San Francisco, CA or Boulder, CO
Business Development Director, Calyxt, US-based
Downstream Process Engineer/
Head of Downstream Processing, Industrial Microbes, Alameda, CA
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Built With Biology, LLC
3559 Mount Diablo Boulevard #2, Lafayette, CA 94549
info@builtwithbiology.com
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