
Ginkgo Bioworks (YC S14) Takes on Zymergen with $45M in Series B Funding - katm
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/23/ginkgo-bioworks-takes-on-zymergen-with-45-million-in-series-b-funding/
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krmboya
Felt the name sounded familiar and realized that I'd previously read that Tom
Knight (of the Lisp Machine fame) is also one of the co-founders.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Knight_%28scientist%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Knight_%28scientist%29)

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jrkelly
I'm Jason Kelly, one of the Ginkgo co-founders -- happy to answer questions!

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stillsut
A lot of press is singling out CRISPR as the game changer for Bio industry as
a whole.

Is it particularly useful at Ginkgo, and how is it being used / what problem
is it solving?

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jrkelly
CRISPR makes it easier to edit genomes in a targeted fashion especially in
organisms where engineering the genome has traditionally been really hard
(plants, mammalian cells). We work in microbes that are a lot easier to
engineer out of the gate so it's a little less of a game-changer for us. Still
it is amazing technology -- I'm sure we'll make use of it along with most
everyone that does biological engineering in the future. Though the synthetic
biology crowd is currently poking fun at Wired's over-hyped CRISPR issue,
check out #CRISPRfacts

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dluan
Congrats to all of the brilliant folks at Gingko!

Hurry up and automate science!

