
Ginkgo Bioworks CEO Wants Biology to Manufacture Physical Goods - dpflan
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-11-06/ginkgo-bioworks-ceo-wants-biology-to-manufacture-physical-goods
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dreamcompiler
People sometimes ask why there's so much discussion of Lisp on HN. It's
because so many times when you scratch the paint off a trend, a language, or a
prominent person in computer science you find Lisp right below the surface.

One of the founders of Ginkgo, Tom Knight, was one of the inventors of the
Lisp Machine.

~~~
agumonkey
I knew the name ringed a bell, thanks for filling in :)

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dmix
> We have a partnership with a large Canadian company called the Cronos Group,
> a $100 million deal. We’re basically programming cells to produce
> cannabinoids. It’s very similar to what we did back in the fragrance
> industry. You get cannabinoids—THC, CBD, and so on—by extracting the oil
> from the flower of the cannabis plant, and then that goes into things like
> vaping and edible products. The process for doing all that growing is
> extremely expensive and requires big greenhouses. What we’re doing is
> reading the DNA of the cannabis plant and finding the part that encodes the
> cannabinoids. We then move it into brewer’s yeast, brew it up, and instead
> of beer, you get CBD.

I noticed he mentions CBD but not other parts of the plant, they also mention
CBD on their homepage. Hopefully they don't spend too much resources on the
quack science stuff which a lot of CBD stuff is being marketed with (outside
of epilepsy).

The other stuff they are working on sounds truly fascinating. The amount of
money going into it is pretty crazy, I guess they've made a proven model with
mint oil / brewers yeast and are now scaling it up like a tech startup. Or
rather like YC for bio startups but more hands-on with IP ownership and
providing resources.

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mogadsheu
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?

~~~
a_bonobo
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.

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mogadsheu
>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
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.

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blaufast
There are zero profitable syn bio companies in the world because even simple
projects are too slow and costly.

Ginkgo doesn’t value it’s employees, and doesn’t have secret sauce. I think
the next company, that Ginkgo diaspora found or flee to, will be the one that
starts making these claims real.

~~~
heuermh
I wonder if you might expand on your assertion that Ginkgo doesn't value its
employees -- I have a friend that joined Ginkgo not too long ago, and I hope
things work out for them.

~~~
blaufast
It resembles academia. The company is very penny wise and pound foolish, toxic
behaviors aren’t managed, the (5!) founders are basically dead weight, and
hours are expected to bleed into evenings and weekends. There’s an inversion
of resources- the more work you have, the less you will be supported by the
company. The people who flourish tend to have academic backgrounds and this
perpetuates the cycle. Good luck to your friend!

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m0zg
Having spent years working at a startup, you can confidently divide any and
all claims made in the article by a factor of at least 2, if not 10. Remember
that you're reading the most generous interpretation of what _could_
_potentially_ happen at some point in the future, and aren't reading about the
failures and things that did not pan out. It's basically concentrated
confirmation bias maximally generously extrapolated into the future. Think
Elon Musk and "full self driving" for a calibrated reference. TL;DR: when a
startup CEO or founder says something, don't believe a single word until you
can actually verify the claims.

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neonate
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191109035053/https://www.bloom...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191109035053/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-11-06/ginkgo-
bioworks-ceo-wants-biology-to-manufacture-physical-goods)

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sargun
Does anyone know if Ginko Bioworks has a replicable process? Or is each
synthetic organism built ad-hoc? Whats their special sauce / unfair advantage
over others, like universities?

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seibelj
Weren’t DNA computers that could store petabytes in a thimble-full of material
supposed to come out a decade ago? Biology is not easy harness, even if you
“want” it...

