Having worked for 2 of these companies (and I know some folks who have been at all three) it's always interesting to see what it looks like from an outsider perspective.
> The answer is, they never did, unless they were Gingko sockpuppets themselves
But this is just not true.. Do you really think that Ginkgo has literally zero external customers? The link you posted here has 3 or 4 of them and every quarterly earnings report lists more (and not all of them can be disclosed of course).
Ginkgo is also far from the only Bio/agtech making N-fixing bacteria. Pivot bio has done $100s millions in sales off of it.
Pivot Bio is used by a surprising percentage of farmers in America, mostly as a complement to traditional fertilizers. They are based in Berkeley and I'm sure you could arrange a visit.
Just a terminological point--"synthetic biology" has been used for about 20 years primarily to refer to synthesized life, e.g., Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0. It's also used sometimes to refer to genetically re-engineered organisms, though I think that's needlessly confusing when we already have a distinct term for that. Biological manufacturing is one kind of synthetic biology, but please don't say synthetic biology *is* biomanufacturing.
You are correct that "synthetic biology" includes more than just biology-based manufacturing, but it is incorrect to say that it *primarily* refers to synthesized life. See for example the abstract from this review from 2005 (https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg1637):
"Synthetic biologists come in two broad classes. One uses unnatural molecules to reproduce emergent behaviours from natural biology, with the goal of creating artificial life. The other seeks interchangeable parts from natural biology to assemble into systems that function unnaturally. Either way, a synthetic goal forces scientists to cross uncharted ground to encounter and solve problems that are not easily encountered through analysis. This drives the emergence of new paradigms in ways that analysis cannot easily do. Synthetic biology has generated diagnostic tools that improve the care of patients with infectious diseases, as well as devices that oscillate, creep and play tic-tac-toe."
See also this George Church quote (from this 2014 review https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm3767): "In my view, synthetic biology was never focused on 'genetic circuits', but rather on biology rapidly maturing as an engineering discipline, including computer-aided-design (CAD), safety systems, integrating models, genome editing and accelerated evolution. Synthetic biology is less like highly modular (or 'switch-like') electrical engineering and computer science and more like civil and mechanical engineering in its use of optimization of modelling of whole system-level stresses and traffic flow."
I invested some money into Scorpius Biologics. So far they turned a lot of my money into very little money. So they do have some technology that makes things disappear apparently.
I worked tangentially in this field for my thesis research (alcohol fermentations of wood sugars). I graduated and spent a career in industrial fermentation of antibiotics and steroids plus some enzymes and food additives.
Cost is a real concern. First the products tend to be in dilute streams, making recovery and purification major expenses. And then there is the messiness. The organism is doing this thing you want as a sideline. There will be side products and impurities and it necessarily will be dilute. None of these are problems with chemical syntheses where you use pure starting materials to react in a limited set of reactions which can be studied and optimized and one this has been done will product reliably with less oversight than the biological system that is running hundreds of reactions in parallel.
You need the right kind of product to make this work and these are hard to find.
Having worked for 2 of these companies (and I know some folks who have been at all three) it's always interesting to see what it looks like from an outsider perspective.
> The answer is, they never did, unless they were Gingko sockpuppets themselves
But this is just not true.. Do you really think that Ginkgo has literally zero external customers? The link you posted here has 3 or 4 of them and every quarterly earnings report lists more (and not all of them can be disclosed of course).
Ginkgo is also far from the only Bio/agtech making N-fixing bacteria. Pivot bio has done $100s millions in sales off of it.
ok, I can amend the bit about external customers, I was speaking too loosely.
will also have to see what's going on with pivot bio.
Pivot Bio is used by a surprising percentage of farmers in America, mostly as a complement to traditional fertilizers. They are based in Berkeley and I'm sure you could arrange a visit.
Just a terminological point--"synthetic biology" has been used for about 20 years primarily to refer to synthesized life, e.g., Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0. It's also used sometimes to refer to genetically re-engineered organisms, though I think that's needlessly confusing when we already have a distinct term for that. Biological manufacturing is one kind of synthetic biology, but please don't say synthetic biology *is* biomanufacturing.
ok will fix
You are correct that "synthetic biology" includes more than just biology-based manufacturing, but it is incorrect to say that it *primarily* refers to synthesized life. See for example the abstract from this review from 2005 (https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg1637):
"Synthetic biologists come in two broad classes. One uses unnatural molecules to reproduce emergent behaviours from natural biology, with the goal of creating artificial life. The other seeks interchangeable parts from natural biology to assemble into systems that function unnaturally. Either way, a synthetic goal forces scientists to cross uncharted ground to encounter and solve problems that are not easily encountered through analysis. This drives the emergence of new paradigms in ways that analysis cannot easily do. Synthetic biology has generated diagnostic tools that improve the care of patients with infectious diseases, as well as devices that oscillate, creep and play tic-tac-toe."
See also this George Church quote (from this 2014 review https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm3767): "In my view, synthetic biology was never focused on 'genetic circuits', but rather on biology rapidly maturing as an engineering discipline, including computer-aided-design (CAD), safety systems, integrating models, genome editing and accelerated evolution. Synthetic biology is less like highly modular (or 'switch-like') electrical engineering and computer science and more like civil and mechanical engineering in its use of optimization of modelling of whole system-level stresses and traffic flow."
For those who are interested, the Böttcher complexity graph comes from this post which I highly recommend:
https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/checking-my-prejudices-on-materials-decarbonization
I invested some money into Scorpius Biologics. So far they turned a lot of my money into very little money. So they do have some technology that makes things disappear apparently.
Great article Sarah! I hope to link this in an upcoming Company Report I will be releasing soon.
I worked tangentially in this field for my thesis research (alcohol fermentations of wood sugars). I graduated and spent a career in industrial fermentation of antibiotics and steroids plus some enzymes and food additives.
Cost is a real concern. First the products tend to be in dilute streams, making recovery and purification major expenses. And then there is the messiness. The organism is doing this thing you want as a sideline. There will be side products and impurities and it necessarily will be dilute. None of these are problems with chemical syntheses where you use pure starting materials to react in a limited set of reactions which can be studied and optimized and one this has been done will product reliably with less oversight than the biological system that is running hundreds of reactions in parallel.
You need the right kind of product to make this work and these are hard to find.
As a psychiatrist your blog is super duper valuable. Thank you.