>FASTA_23
Bioenergic engineering; Sony's biotech cameras; >2x longer DNA synthesis; AI and biosecurity; Peter Pan’s lost IVF kids; Cattle GM probiotics; Lab-grown saffron; Planned obsolescence in biotech
>FASTA: weekly short reads of the global biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy | Read in under 5 min | Follow on LinkedIn, X, and now Instagram too! | Versión en Español
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1/10: Bioenergic engineering at ARIA
ARIA comes up with idiosyncratic calls for research projects in overlooked areas, makes them look sexy (see artwork below), and gives great scientists money to pursue them. I find that very cool. Like, had you ever thought about engineering how living things use and generate energy (not DNA, not information, ENERGY!) to treat neuro disease or create environmental solutions???
Their upcoming program is dubbed “Precision Mitochondria” and aims to build a toolkit to study and edit mtDNA precisely, for the first time.
2/10: Unproven stem cell therapies in Florida
A new law now allows doctors in Florida to administer unapproved stem-cell therapies as long as these are retrieved, manufactured, and stored in a facility that is registered and regulated by the FDA. The state representative who sponsored this bill thinks this will help Florida become a hub for medical tourism. A 2021 study identified nearly 2,800 clinics in the US selling purported stem-cell treatments.
3/10: Sony’s biotech cameras
Cameras are used all the time in sequencing platforms to detect the addition of nucleotides. The question is what type of camera each platform uses, and how that helps reduce noise and redundancy. Traditional sequencing platforms like PacBio rely on frame-based cameras and ZMWs (Zero-Mode Waveguides) that confine illumination to a nanoscale volume.
Meanwhile, Stream Genomics is using “event-based” TCPA (Time-Correlated Photon Accumulation) cameras that use a Sony sensor and can be bought for as cheap as $1.2k. These capture the precise timing of individual photon events rather than averaging over video frame. While spatial resolution is on par with the alternative, the technique hasn’t gained broad adoption.
4/10: >2x longer DNA synthesis
Phosphoramidite synthesis, the industry standard for nucleotide synthesis, can only put around 350 bp together and struggles with sequences that are highly repetitive or complex. At last, an enzyme called TdT is pulling up to join up to 750 bp (Ansa Biotechnologies) together, de novo, and handle complex secondary structures like repeats, hairpins and high GC content.
More impressively, Shiyue Fang’s lab at Michigan Technological University in Houghton has devised a different chemical method that uses glass beads instead of controlled-pore glass which limits DNA molecule length. The team was able to synthesize a 1,728-base polymer with an overall error rate of 0.04%.
5/10: Basecamp Research x MSFT & NVDA
Microsoft and NVIDIA power Basecamp Research’s AI models to process and analyze data at increased speeds, considering Basecamp’s target of growing their database by 10x every year. I’d like to better understand the data sharing terms of this ‘partnership’ (i.e. whether Basecamp’s data feed Nvidia’s models too), and b) how their compute capabilities might compare to other big tech’s (i.e. do they actually have any alternative?).
The Biofounders Podcast is back! Tune in to weekly, fun conversations with the founders, biohackers, CEOs and VCs you have not met yet.
Arye Lipman - Cofounder & COO @ Biosphere
Arye Lipman cofounded Biosphere, a startup building UV-sterilized bioreactors that replace the 1950’s steam reactors to reduce biomanufacturing costs. Previously, he built a network of biotech labs for startups like Minicircle and invested in some of them. Biosphere came out of stealth this year through a USD $8.8 M seed round led by Lowercarbon Capita…
6/10: AI and biosecurity regulations
This article basically says that AI could lower the barrier to designing dangerous pathogens. At the same time, the US AI Action plan warns: “AI-enabled predictions are of little use if scientists cannot also increase the scale of experimentation”.
Mainstream storytelling around biosecurity and bioterrorism portrays a young hacker wearing a black jacket in some garage lab, creating a virus that’ll kill humanity. This obviously ignores that, indeed, the people who currently have this knowledge and capabilities are institutions, not individuals. And why not go after agriculture first anyway?
7/10: Peter Pan’s lost IVF kids
This week, the world’s oldest baby was born from an embryo that had been frozen for over 30 years. The surprise is he’s not alone: Millions of IVF embryos are lying in storage tanks around the world, and it’s not always clear whether they’re someone’s “property”, hence who is responsible for them, who gets to use them, etc.
What the heck?! Well, 70-80% of IVF eggs are successfully fertilized and 30-50% of them make it to a blastocyst on day 5 and proceed to pregnancy. Some people get no viable embryos; others make more than 10 but only use one, leaving the rest in limbo for who knows how long — Could they colonize Mars???
8/10: $18M for cattle probiotics
BiomEdit is combating Necrotic enteritis, a disease that attacks chickens and causes $6 billion in annual losses worldwide. Their genetically engineered probiotic, Optavant, delivers antibodies directly to the chicken’s gut, hence the name “probiotic vectored antibody (pvAb)”.
9/10: Krokos’ lab-grown saffron + story time
I’ve always been fascinated by the possibility that you can literally grow anything in a dish — really, folks have grown apples, strawberries, peppers, you name it, in vitro — even more intriguing is the fact that this is old science from the 70s or 90s (sorry milennials) and, somehow, people lost interest in the technique. Today, Krokos and other similar companies want to commercialize lab-grown produce.
When I was researching how to do this myself back in 2023 (I wanted to make a shit ton of money), saffron looked like an obvious choice, since it was the most expensive food crop in the world. I saw Evolva had once synthesized the three main molecules that give saffron its taste and aroma, but they went out of business. There were also papers about saffron flowers which had four stigmas instead of the usual three, so I thought gene editing the flowers to have more of those might be another way to reduce costs. Many were growing saffron through vertical farming too.
Anyway, I got some bulbs all the way from Turkey but didn’t get far with the lab-grown part. Looks like the Krokos team and I were aligned at least on the technical end: grow Crocus sativus calli and differentiate them into stigma… at least in theory! Now it’s time for them to prove if they can actually make millions for their investors 😄
10/10: Planned obsolescence as a biodesign principle
In the 1920s, lightbulb manufacturers from the Phoebus cartel agreed to engineer the limit bulb lifespan to 1,000 hours to drive repeat sales. Decades later, tech companies still design batteries in smartphones to degrade predictably and push users toward newer models rather than repairs. We now know this design philosophy as “planned obsolescence”.
The Hayflick limit, which marks the number of times a cell can divide, is a pristine example of how biology too, evolved planned obsolescence into the genetic chip of every living thing. No matter how much we take care of our biological hardware, the time will always come for us to go unneeded by our genes. As suggested by ARIA’s Bioenergic call, our biological batteries also decay.
Today, some biotechnologies embody this principle more than others. While many gene therapies are a one-shot cure that lasts as long as you do, some GM plants could be engineered to be infertile such that only the company that owns the germplasm can control how far its capabilities go, and when users will be forced to upgrade.
The series Black Mirror has made a similar warning for Brain-Computer Interfaces. In the first episode of the latest season, a big company uses a subscription model with ever-changing terms that the user starts paying for with a hard-earned double shift job, next with their dignity as a content creator, and finally, with their life.
I know this may not be a perfect analogy in biology, but I do believe that biotechnology might begin to adopt some of these design principles, if it hasn’t already. Please comment or reply with your thoughts; I’ll be writing a longer piece on this soon →
A must read thanks
A must read thanks