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AI, machine learning, digitalization, automation, and computational biology – all are needed for synthetic biology to succeed at speed and scale. Synthetic biology experiments are so data-rich that it’s no longer effective to sift the data and find trends by hand. Nor is it efficient to hand-run experiments when robots can be quicker, more accurate, and work at all hours, with no caffeine needed. ‍

Digital biology has made such leaps that we can now predict the structure of every known protein, visualize biology in VR, share experiment protocols between robots across the world and run entire labs through the cloud. But digital bio still has a long way to go, from standardization, implementation, cost, and accuracy. What new opportunities are emerging for innovation and discovery?

This newsletter is brought to you by Elegen. Elegen can help you eliminate bottlenecks in your DNA supply by providing high-accuracy long DNA, up to 7kb, shipped in just 6–8 business days, with customer verified error rates less than 1:65,000 bp. With rapid access to accurate, long, DNA you can build faster, iterate faster, and realize the potential of your synthetic biology workflows. You can meet Elegen and CEO Matthew Hill at SynBioBeta, The Global Synthetic Biology Conference, May 23 - 25, 2023.

We put together a list of everything you need to know about AI & Digital Biology, and the major developments in the last year. Join the discussion at SynBioBeta 2023: The Global Synthetic Biology Conference May 23 - 25, and the track dedicated to this topic.

• The researchers behind the AlphaFold artificial-intelligence (AI) system won one of this year’s US$3-million Breakthrough prizes—the most lucrative awards in science. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, both at DeepMind in London, were recognized for creating the tool that has predicted the 3D structures of almost every known protein on the planet.

• Sanofi is betting on the potential of AI to transform drug discovery, and they recently signed a $1.2 billion biobucks research collaboration with San Francisco-based Atomwise.

• AI-Driven Biology Can Get Critical Medicines To Patients Faster: Absci, a synthetic biology company that recently went public, is using an AI-powered platform for protein discovery and production to help pharmaceutical companies create drugs that were previously impossible to make.

Absci founder and CEO, Sean McClain, (center) at the company’s bell-ringing to celebrate the company going public.

• Inscripta Is Reimagining What The Synthetic Biology Company Of The Future Will Be. As biomanufacturing transforms entire sectors of our economy, Inscripta is set to capture the opportunity with a more efficient approach to making bioproducts. 

Inscripta’s team in Pleasanton, CA

• Startup Cradle Lets You Design Custom Proteins By Just Typing In A Prompt. With two sites – one in Delft, The Netherlands, and one is Zurich, Switzerland, – Cradle is straddling the world of biology and artificial intelligence, a powerful fusion of technologies that threatens to disrupt the way scientists design proteins. 

Cradle Team at their site in the Netherlands.

• Can A Desktop DNA Printer Stomp Out The Next Pandemic? Imagine you could print DNA on your desktop. What would that enable you to do? Telesis Bio wants to bring the ability to write DNA to every lab with their desktop automated gene synthesis platform, Digital-to-biological converter™.

• Elemental Machines Is Bringing The Internet Of Things To Lab Operations To Save Millions Of Dollars For Biotech Companies. The company is helping biotech labs streamline their operations and potentially save millions of dollars for companies by controlling environmental variables.

Sridhar Iyengar, the founder and CEO of Elemental Machines.

• Brooklyn Evolution Startup Melonfrost Raises $7 Million To Make More Microbes. Growing microbes for applications ranging from food to therapeutics all face a key challenging — engineering novel optimized strains at scale. Brooklyn-based start-up Melonfrost aims to change this paradigm by harnessing the power of evolution.

• How Culture Biosciences Is Meeting The Demand For Large-Scale Biomanufacturing. Culture builds and operates bioreactors with custom hardware and software. Its team runs the bioreactors for companies that are manufacturing food, therapeutics, and other bioproducts.

Culture Lab Team.

• Drug Manufacturing Has One Huge Flaw. This Synthetic Biology Startup Just Raised $200 Million To Fix It. What’s the holy grail of biology? This startup says it’s engineerable cells, and with $200million of new funding for their CAD platform to program genetic circuits, the manufacture of biological therapeutics is set to radically change.

The four Asimov co-founders, from left to right: Doug Densmore, Alec Nielsen, Raja Srinivas and Chris Voigt.

• Can BiologIC’s Biocomputer Help Bring Biomanufacturing To Space? BiologIC Technologies, a company out of Cambridge, UK, wants to bring disruptive innovation to biomanufacturing with the world's first biocomputer.

• Why We Can’t Keep Doing Science In A Spreadsheet. Cloud automation is one of the methods that is accelerating innovation in science. By using the cloud, scientists can upload and share data in a centralized location, which makes it easier to analyze. The cloud also creates the opportunity to use machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI) easier.
  

AI & Digital Biology at SynBioBeta:

Here are some of the sessions that we are planning:

• Protein folding, Proteomics, and AI 

• Tech Bio 

• VR / Biology in the Metaverse 

• Machine Learning 

• Hardware and Automation 

• Software, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology 

• Data standardization, analysis & algorithmic experiment design

• Quantum Meets Bio

• Human + Machine: Improving Human/ Automation Integration‍

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We hope you enjoyed this AI & Digital Biology wrap up newsletter and I hope that you’ll choose to join us in May at SynBioBeta 2023: The Global Synthetic Biology Conference.

Regards,
John

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John Cumbers
Founder, SynBioBeta

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