Drawing From The Power Of Biology For Human Technology – PSFK (subscription)

We sat down with Christina Agapakis, Creative Director of Ginkgo Bioworks, who'll be speaking at our PSFK 2017 conference, to discuss positioning biotechnology as the evolution of industrial design

In todays day and age, we swoon overthe latest sparkly high-tech gadgets so much so that we now want them to be conjoined to us like anotherlimb. Case in pointElon musk is taking it so far as to create a computer interlace for your brain, don a VR headset you can now watch shows in a virtual living room with your friends and press a button on your kicks to orderyour fave pepperoni slice.But what if you took your eyes away from your VR headsetor sneakers for just one moment and peered outside your very window? Perhaps youd see a dilapidated,graffiti-ridden building across the street that has been left to its own devicesfor 25 years, but mother nature has taken its hold, with vines clamberingup the outer walls and plants sprouting from the sidewalk cracks below. If you had go-go gadget x-ray vision, youd see something incredibly powerful within each plant: photosynthesis and regenerative powers.Thats right, if you thought the heroes of X-Men or Transformers had killer superpowers, think again. Biology can heal itself!

Or rewind 80 years and take this for an example: Back onAugust 6, 1945 when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, six Ginkgo Biloba trees that were situated at the epicenter of the blast center sprouted shortly thereafter without any deformations. These trees are still alive today in 2017.If this isnt proof that biology is the most powerful technology we can imagine, I dont know what is.

Ginkgo Bioworks Creative Director Christina Agapakis believes that we have a revolution on our hands: to no longer take this power of biology for granted. Thanks to the aptly named company (yes, named after these almighty indestructible Ginkgo trees!) in the future you could potentially smash your iPhone screen and it could heal itself. Organism engineers at the self-described organism design firm learn from nature to develop new organisms that replace technology with biology. Essentially they design custom microbes for customers across multiple markets, building foundries to scale the process of organism engineering using software and hardware automation.

In light of this, I sat down with Christina to discuss the future of biotech, that the most amazing computer is actually inside of us and how drawing from the power of biology for human technology is where the real powerresides.

Want more of a deep-dive? Christina will be taking the stage at ourPSFK 2017 conference on May 19 to discuss why and how biology will be making an impact on a wide range of technologies in the future. Get your tickets today before they sell out!Emily: For those people out there who have never heard of Ginkgo Bioworks, can you describe a little bit about what the company does?Christina: Were an organism design company. In a nutshell, were obsessed with biology. We think that biology can do all these incredible things, like growing out of dirt with just sunlight.We want to ask the question: why cant our technologies do amazing things like that, too? Essentially were trying to bring biology into technology across a variety of different industries, so we work to build tools that make it easier for us to understand and work with biology. In doing so,we can make it faster and cheaper and bring biology into markets and products that you wouldnt really expect them to be in. When you think of biotechnology, you think of pharmaceutical, maybe you think of agriculture, but you dont necessarily think of flavors, fragrances, cosmetics or all of the other markets that are now opening up through ingredients and products that can be made via biotechnology.

We work with other big companies like Ajinomoto, Cardeaux and ADM, all of whom are really fantastic companies working in food ingredients.With them, were working on making fermented ingredients, whether theyre certain nutritional products or other kinds of cultured ingredients. With Cardeaux, because theyre already experts at fermentation, were working to see if we can help them improve their strains and get them to be more efficient, so they can use fewer resources to make their products.When a client orders a product, what is the process that goes into producing the desired results?Its a partnership thats really being able to identify something thats going to be feasible technically and commercially and make sense for us and for our partners. So its not like they can fill in an online form like, Make us a yeast that does this. Its a long design process of narrowing down the scope of what we could possibly do with them. Each project is uniquebecause theres so much shared about biology and how biology works, that a lot of the lessons that we learn from one project really influence and make other projects easier. The more we learn about putting together pieces of DNA, the faster were going to be at doing it on another project. The better we are at understanding the chemistry of a fruit flavor, that might actually also impact something that seems different but is chemically similar.

Usually, we start by asking: what is it that biology already does? What are the enzymes that can do this kind of chemistry? Can we look to evolution and see what has evolved to solve this problem that our customer has?Then, because weve built these automated tools that let us build many different prototypes and test them all in parallel, we can build a lot of these prototype strains to test various versions of the same thing.Even by just looking at the DNA sequence, you cant predict what it might do, but you can build a lot of things at once and actually see it and from that, and learn a lot about the underlying biology, too.Then we can really refine the process and get closer towards the strain thats making the product that we want or has the characteristics that we want. After that, we go intothe process of optimizing and scaling, so we can actually grow those microbes in really large tanks, which looks very much like a brewery, and see how much of that product we can make.What do you see as some of the biggest ideas and shifts in the biotech industry in 2017 and beyond?I think that well see more and more opportunities and a shift in the conversation around the biotech industry more broadly, away from this perception of it being pharmaceutical.Last year, at the Biofabricate Conference, Adidas unveiled a shoe that had been produced with spider silk, made in a brewery by genetically-engineered yeast. Theres another company called Bolt Threads that launched a necktie made of spider silk that was brewed and fermented.Were seeing brands embracing biotechnology in really unexpected and new ways. I think well see more and more of that in years to come and a different kind of conversation and a different kind of opportunity for new kinds of products and design.

Therell be a lot more from Ginkgo this year. Were expanding our vision in terms of the market and askingnew questions, so theres a lot on the horizon but nothing I can share quite yet.Stay tuned at the conference in May!

Speaking of the conference, could you give us a brief sneak peek ofwhat youll be discussing atPSFK 2017?

I will focus on why and how biology will be making an impact on a wide range of technologies in the future. First, why biology is the most powerful manufacturing technology on the planet, second how scientists and engineers are learning to design with living things, and finally the opportunities that are emerging today in consumer biotechnology.

Thanks for your words of wisdom, Christina! Come see Christina take the stage to talk about the future of biotech at ourPSFK 2017 conference on May 19. Get your tickets today before they sell out!

Christina Agapakis is a biologist, writer and artist interested in microbes and the future of biotechnology. She collaborates with engineers, designers, artists and social scientists to explore the many unexpected connections between microbiology, technology, art and popular culture. During her PhD at Harvard, she worked on producing hydrogen fuel in bacteria and making photosynthetic animals. Shes taught designers at the Art Center College of Design and biomolecular engineers at UCLA, and once made cheese using bacteria from the human body. Shes written on biology, technology and culture for a number of outlets.

Read more here:
Drawing From The Power Of Biology For Human Technology - PSFK (subscription)