Synthetic Biology

Engineering Nature to Build Better Products

Imagine a future where eating a hamburger or wearing a leather jacket doesn’t mean a cow was killed. Synthetic biology is going to redefine manufacturing. It will impact everything from pharmaceuticals, agricultural inputs, food, and industrial materials.

At Prime Movers Lab, we invest in breakthrough science solving the largest problems. Synthetic biology will be the foundation for a lot of the innovation we expect to see in the next decade.

One of my fundamental beliefs is that the best way to have a massive impact is to make products that are better and cheaper than incumbents. Synthetic biology enables this across a range of sectors.

What: Synthetic biology is the ability to use engineering approaches in the biological domain. In engineering, we can build to meet performance specifications. In the past, biology has been limited to far more trial and error than we would like. Today, we can use gene editing tools like CRISPR to engineer new types of microbial, plant, and even animal life to address specific challenges or present specific traits.

Why: We live in a society where the demands of capitalism and of the environment are often at odds. Synthetic biology offers an elegant way to align those interests. Climate change is among the greatest threats humanity faces and synthetic biology lets us make the stuff we want while dramatically reducing our environmental impact. This technology lets us have our (genetically modified) cake and eat it too.

Synthetic biology is emerging as several technologies converge and reach maturity. First, DNA sequencing costs have dropped by many orders of magnitude. The second one is the ability to read, write, and edit DNA with tools like CRISPR-Cas9. And third, cell-free biology has led to faster iteration cycles, more precise control of reactions, and less “background noise” than would occur in a full cellular system. Fourth, advanced biosensors make testing faster and cheaper and speed up feedback loops. Fifth, computing power allows us to synthesize data and digitally model the physical world, leading to cheaper, faster iteration.

Climate change is going to have lots of second-order effects that we should start thinking about now. Vanilla only grows in a specific microclimate that could be disrupted. Warmer temperatures mean insect populations will increase. Rising sea levels threaten rice paddies. And of course, changing weather patterns will have myriad effects on where we grow crops and how productive they are. Synthetic biology provides the tools to manage these impacts without relying on the same methods that got us into this situation — fossil fuels and petrochemicals, industrial agriculture, etc.

How: This is a broad domain and there are several ways to think about the different approaches. A straightforward model is end-use or industry. Here are a few examples of how this can be applied.

• Materials: replacing or improving materials we use with alternatives that are lower impact. E.g. leather, dyes, or mineral ores.
• Pharmaceuticals: microbes can produce compounds, proteins, etc. that we can’t make using other methods or more efficiently (e.g. Insulin).
• Agriculture: making seeds more resilient or grow faster, making crops healthier, or reducing the need for chemical fertilizers or pesticides (e.g. salt-tolerant rice, “golden rice”, Pivot Bio’s PROVEN® 40).
• Foodtech: Milk or beef without cows, etc. We can grow cells without an animal. Companies are targeting everything you can imagine, from fish, to chicken, to pork, to wooly mammoth.

Examples:

• MycoWorks* is disrupting the leather industry with a fungi-based alternative
• Iridia* stores data in DNA
• Melibio makes honey without bees
• Joyn Bio develops microbial inputs for agriculture to improve performance
• Wildtype makes sushi-grade salmon through cellular agriculture
• Moderna and BioNTech produced Covid-19 vaccines using syn-bio.

*MycoWorks and Iridia are Prime Movers Lab portfolio companies.

Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.

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