Hi ,

This week’s digest is brought to you by Ganymede, the cloud infrastructure provider purpose-built for the life sciences and manufacturing industries. The company's Lab-as-Code technology integrates physical lab instruments, applications such as electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) and laboratory information management systems (LIMS), data pipelines, and third-party partners like contract research organizations (CROs) and contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) together in a single cloud data layer. Ganymede accelerates time to innovation by allowing scientists to automate the world around them using cloud-controlled data flows. 

Image from ganymede.bio

We’re really excited to announce SynBioBeta's new podcast series called The Inside Track. The topics that guide so much of our conference content make for such wonderful discussions that we thought...why not capture that and let others listen in!

In this first episode of the series, our Director of Content, Jeff Buguliskis, sat down with Dan Grushkin, Ginger Dosier, and Kit McDonnell to talk a little bit about Biodesign. These three "characters" really made his job a lot of fun. But don't let the jovial nature of this podcast fool you. These are some wicked smart folks who can break down a subject like Biodesign and get to the root of why it's important to pay attention to this topic.

Dan, Ginger, and Kit are also Track Chairs for the upcoming SynBioBeta 2024 Conference, so if you want to meet them in person and discuss biodesign more, you'll have to come to San Jose from May 6–9. 

SynBioBeta History

It’s been six years since I invited Hugh Goold, from the ARC Center of Excellence in Synthetic Biology at Macquarie University in Sydney, to California to present at SynBioBeta.  Now, his projects are starting to come together, and he and his colleagues just published a Cell Genomics paper describing the first of two 1Mb engineered chromosomes, as well as a historical perspective on advances in engineering algae. Amazing work and a fascinating paper. Make sure you check it out!

Meet the Latest SynBioBeta Speakers!

New Sponsors & Exhibitors:

• Gene Universal is a pioneer in the field of gene synthesis and synthetic biology.

• Bold View Capital provides asset financing and leasing programs to businesses ranging from fast-moving start-ups to established companies.

• Ganymede is the modern cloud data platform for the life sciences and manufacturing.

• Procelys by Lesaffre supports biotechnology industries by providing fermentation nutrients to improve the bacterial growth of microorganisms.

• Cradle is a biotech startup that uses generative AI to help scientists design and engineer proteins

• Liberation Labs was formed to address the growing fermentation capacity gap in cellular agriculture by providing the industry with the infrastructure to commercialize novel proteins

• Rodon Biologics is a biotech CRO/CDMO with 20 years of activity engineering, producing, analyzing, characterizing, and delivering recombinant protein processes.

• SPOC Proteomics is a deep-tech life sciences startup that has developed a transformative new proteomic biosensor platform termed sensor-integrated proteome-on-chip (SPOC).

A few of the Startup companies who will be joining us at the conference this year:

Sterling Bio Machines, BioInnovation Institute, The Cell Co, HERlab, Lonza, Pando Bioscience, Barnstorm, VITA OneShared.World, GenApex Bio, Opera Bioscience, Nitro Biosciences, Better Empire, SPRIND GmbH, Hawktail, OpenProtein AI, NFX, Putnam Investments, Caldero Limited, Satori Capital, BKR Collection, Playground Global, Nomura Greentech, Planetary Technologies and Messaginglab.

If you want a space on the exhibit hall floor, please contact Anissa Cooke.

Insights (Exclusive Content):

• DNA Synthesis—Is the Future Chemical, Enzymatic, or Both?: Enzymatic oligonucleotide synthesis could offer some advantages over chemical methods, but there are many hurdles to overcome.

Industry News:

• Cordon Bleu, meet CRISPR: Engineered Fungi Enters the World of Gourmet Cuisine. The culinary arts are getting a CRISPR makeover with a new gene editing toolkit that promises to unlock a whole new world of fungi-based cuisine.

• From Glucose Gauge to Chemo Checker with a Dash of Protein Engineering. Leveraging simple glucose monitoring technology, Rice University researchers open a new frontier in personalized and efficient point-of-care therapeutics.

Additional Industry News:

• Berkeley-based startup Orbillion has raised fresh capital that brings its cumulative funding to $15 million. The round follows a successful 200-liter production run, which the company claims validates its predictive modeling platform for “de-risking” the scaleup process for cultivated meat. (AgFunder News)

Patricia Bubner, CEO of Orbillion Bio.

• Illinois Invests $680M in Biotechnology Sector to Enhance Biomanufacturing and Precision Fermentation Capabilities. The state of Illinois is set to advance in the biotechnology sector through a substantial government investment strategy, enhancing its biomanufacturing and precision fermentation capabilities. (Vegconomist.com)

• Homeworld Collective has awarded $1.35 million dollars to 16 teams to act on their big ideas through Homeworld’s inaugural Garden Grants program. They chose to support practitioners trying to tackle some of the biggest problems in climate. (Homeworld.bio) 

• The NSF and UKRI have launched new funding opportunities for US-UK researcher collaboration on the topic of Addressing Global Challenges through the Bioeconomy. Read more here (UK) and here (US). 

• New bioengineered protein design shows promise in fighting COVID-19: The engineered protein, resembling a structure with five arms, exhibits a unique feature—a hydrophobic pore within its coiled-coil configuration. (NYU.edu) 

Regards,
John

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John Cumbers

CEO, SynBioBeta

Who's hiring?

• Senior Applications Scientist at Elegen (San Carlos, CA)

• Senior Bioinformatics Developer at Elegen (San Carlos, CA)

• Senior Automation Engineer, R&D at Elegen (San Carlos, CA)

• Staff Process Engineer at Twist Bioscience (San Francisco, CA)

• Research Associate II, Process Development at Twist Bioscience (South San Francisco, CA)

• Program Director, RNA Therapeutics at Ginkgo Bioworks (Boston, MA)

• Associate Director, Government Relations at Ginkgo Bioworks (Washington, DC)

• Executive Assistant to Founder & CEO at SynBioBeta (Remote)