Category: Process Design & Scale Up Services

Scaling Up Production of Brazzein, a Novel Sweetener, with GreenLab

Posted on by Ginkgo Bioworks

To scale up its production of brazzein, GreenLab will leverage its proprietary technology to grow proteins inside corn kernels, optimizing its process with Ginkgo’s Plant Trait Services, Protein Services, and Deployment Capabilities

We’re thrilled about our latest collaboration with GreenLab, to enable the commercial scale production of brazzein, a sweet-tasting protein found in the fruit of the native West African Oubli plant. Ginkgo and GreenLab have previously partnered on a project to develop an enzyme for GreenLab’s PFAS degradation application.

The global sugar replacement market is growing due to increased consumer demand. Sugar substitutes can help manage obesity, but some artificial sweeteners have been linked to various health issues including heart disease. Novel sweeteners — like brazzein, which has a sweetness factor up to 2,000 times greater than sucrose — can be used as natural substitutes for sugar in products across the food and beverage industry.

GreenLab hopes to revolutionize the sweetener industry with brazzein. Its proprietary technology allows it to grow enzymes and other proteins inside of corn kernels. By producing proteins in a cultivated crop, GreenLab can readily scale production across acres of cornfields, with little additional up-front capital and infrastructure. After the protein of interest is extracted from the kernel with minimal waste, most of the corn used will then proceed along the existing value chain, including food, feed or fuel. Thanks to its proprietary technology, GreenLab currently has two transformative enzymes in commercial production, including manganese peroxidase and laccase, and has already successfully grown corn containing brazzein.

GreenLab is leveraging Ginkgo’s capabilities to scale up its production of brazzein in three ways:

  • One, using Ginkgo Plant Trait Services to improve GreenLab’s expression of brazzein in the corn kernel to achieve economically-competitive levels.
  • Two, using Ginkgo Protein Services to express brazzein in a microbial chassis via precision fermentation.
  • And three, using Ginkgo Deployment Capabilities to develop downstream processes to purify brazzein from both the corn kernel and fermentation broth.

By pursuing these pathways to brazzein production, GreenLab intends to be the preeminent supplier of brazzein to food and beverage companies, all while reducing market and technical risk.

Karen Wilson, CEO of GreenLab: “GreenLab is eager to work with Ginkgo on this novel go-to-market strategy. By using Ginkgo Plant Trait Services, Protein Services and Deployment Capabilities we will be able to satisfy the demand for brazzein in the market with less risk using Ginkgo’s success based pricing model. Our existing partnership with Ginkgo has enabled this unique R&D approach for a product (brazzein) that the market desperately wants.”

Sneha Srikrishnan, Senior Director of Business Development and Product Lead, Proteins, at Ginkgo Bioworks: “Our existing relationship with GreenLab has had many positive outcomes, so it made sense to continue working together! We’re thrilled to build upon our partnership and get started on this new program.”

Brennan Duty, Senior Director of Business Development and Product Lead, Plant Traits, at Ginkgo Bioworks added: “Together, we aim to unlock the full potential of brazzein and help create healthier alternatives to traditional sweeteners. We look forward to getting to work and combining Ginkgo’s expertise in protein expression and optimization in plants and microbes alike with GreenLab’s innovative approach to plant biotechnology.”

Learn more about Ginkgo’s Plant Trait Services, Protein Services, and Deployment Capabilities.

Biobased Alternatives to Synthetic Polymers with Bioweg

Posted on by Ena Cratsenburg

Developing cost-effective biobased materials as clean alternatives to synthetic polymers

Today, we’re announcing a new collaboration with Bioweg, a producer of highly functional and customizable biobased materials. Our partnership aims to optimize the production of bacterial cellulose and to produce novel variants of cellulose with improved performance to serve a variety of end markets.

Bioweg’s products are made of biodegradable bacterial cellulose and have already been tested and implemented by companies as an effective substitute for widely used synthetic polymers such as acrylates, polyethylene, and polystyrene. Synthetic polymers often appear as microbeads (i.e., micropowders) and texturants (i.e., Rheology modifiers) in products throughout cosmetics, homecare, personal care, agricultural coatings, and other industries, which contribute to microplastic pollution in waters worldwide. It is estimated that an average person could be ingesting about 5 grams of plastic each week (PDF) through the consumption of common foods and beverages. These microplastics are non-biodegradable and may carry toxic chemicals. Regulatory agencies and communities around the world are starting to regulate microplastics contamination. Just last year, the European Chemical Agency announced phasing out microbeads in ‘rinse-off’ and ‘leave-on’ cosmetics.

Leveraging our strain engineering and screening capabilities to deliver biobased solutions at scale

“Consumers and companies are united in their commitment to finding better performing and more sustainable alternatives for everyday products to break the chain of microplastic pollution. Our solutions are not just tackling a major environmental, sustainability and health problem, but also present a robust market opportunity to replace plastic polymers in care, coatings, chemicals, and other industries,” said Prateek Mahalwar, CEO at Bioweg. “We believe Ginkgo’s strain engineering and screening capabilities can enable us to deliver our biobased solutions at scale and competitive pricing.”

Bioweg is addressing a significant need in the marketplace to develop and produce a new generation of clean alternatives to synthetic polymers. We are committed to supporting the shift to sustainable and biobased high-performance alternatives and are thrilled to be working with Bioweg to address the pressing issues of microplastics contamination and promote responsible consumption.

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Better Baby Formula with NAMUH

Posted on by Jason Kelly

Ginkgo will develop and optimize strains to produce functional oligosaccharides for NAMUH’s infant nutrition products

Today, we are pleased to announce a multi-product collaboration with NAMUH, an infant nutrition company, to develop functional oligosaccharides that are structurally identical to those found in human breast milk.

NAMUH’s mission is to create complete infant formula products substantially comparable to human breast milk, down to the molecular level. Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs) are essential fiber-like nutrients unique to human milk that provide an important energy source to beneficial gut bacteria in infants. Despite being the third most abundant component in human milk, HMOs are currently a small component in infant formulas, if present at all.

Producing HMOs through yeast fermentation

Currently, NAMUH’s proprietary technology provides for a cost-effective source of a family of HMOs via yeast fermentation. NAMUH will leverage Ginkgo’s expertise in yeast strain engineering and fermentation process development through this partnership. Our aim is to enable the production of various HMOs through yeast fermentation and to unlock the possibility of making infant formula nutritionally robust and much closer to human breast milk.

NAMUH plans to leverage Ginkgo’s platform to develop and optimize strains

“Consumer demand for high quality, safe, infant nutrition products is growing, and NAMUH is thrilled to partner with Ginkgo to accelerate our market entry into this rapidly evolving category,” said Dr. Chaeyoung Shin, founder and CEO at NAMUH. “We believe engineering biology is the perfect way to produce crucial nutrients for babies, and together with Ginkgo, we are excited to play a key role in improving how future generations are fed.”

We seek out partners like NAMUH that are using biology to create category-leading products in legacy industries. Countless families around the world rely on infant formula every day, and we are thrilled to be working with NAMUH as they aim to create a healthier, safer formula that parents can depend on.

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Celebrating Cronos Group’s First-of-a-Kind CBC Product

Posted on by Ginkgo Bioworks

Cronos Unveils its New CBC Product, the Spinach FEELZ™ Day Trip Gummies with THC+CBC, Developed on the Ginkgo Platform

We’re so excited to congratulate our customer Cronos – an innovative global cannabinoid company – for launching a CBC-focused product, the Spinach FEELZ™ THC+CBC Day Trip Mango Lime gummies, utilizing our platform for organism design and development.

The Spinach FEELZ™ Day Trip gummies are the first CBC gummy product in Canada and the first of its kind to feature a 3:1 ratio of CBC to THC. The product is currently available in Alberta and British Columbia and will be rolled out to additional provinces over the coming weeks:

  • SPINACH FEELZ™ THC+CBC DAY TRIP GUMMIES: Grab your bag, your friends and get going! A new day’s adventure awaits with Spinach FEELZ™ Day Trip gummies. From sun-up to sun-down, feel at ease and in tune with all the scents, sights, and sounds this glorious world has to offer. These one-of-a-kind THC+CBC gummies are packed with delicious mango-lime flavors and are sure to make for good times with friends. Five sour-then-sweet gummies with 10mg of THC and 30mg of CBC per pack.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Revolutionizing Enzyme Engineering: The Synergy of Big Data and AI at Ginkgo Bioworks

Posted on by Valentin Schreibmaier

 

Enzyme Engineering and Artificial Intelligence

A new frontier

Enzymes are the heroes of biotechnology, serving as biological catalysts that make life’s complex reactions look easy. Inside of the cell, enzymes direct the flow of molecules through metabolic pathways, orchestrating biological functions. Outside of their cellular context, enzymes have been co-opted for specialized roles in manufacturing, speeding up processes that would otherwise be painstakingly slow. In pharmaceuticals, enzymes are custom-engineered to act as targeted therapeutics. Whether in life sciences or industrial applications, enzymes elevate our ability to engineer processes and enact chemistries by facilitating reactions with speed and specificity.

For years, scientists have used a variety of tools to design and optimize these crucial biological components. Traditional methods have often hinged on exploiting evolutionary pressures—letting nature do the heavy lifting over generations and then picking the winners. Structure-based prediction techniques, like Rosetta, also made a significant impact, allowing researchers to model how tweaks to an enzyme’s structure could influence its activity.

But we’re entering a new era–one in which we can train Artificial Intelligence (AI) models based on large biological data sets. This is where Ginkgo Bioworks comes in. Our expansive cell engineering platform is a data-generating powerhouse, churning out the kind of high-quality, voluminous data that AI algorithms thrive on. The marriage of this large-scale data generation with AI models allows us to transcend previous limitations, making Ginkgo an ideal environment to train and deploy machine learning tools for the complex art of enzyme engineering.

The AI Story

Big data, bigger breakthroughs

AI learns from large data sets. Ginkgo Bioworks generates these types of data: we make it possible for you to produce and learn from large data sets. Our extensive repositories of enzymes not only cover a wide range of protein sequences but are also complemented by highly targeted data, revealing precise sequence-function correlations. This dual-data approach is implemented through machine learning cycles in our enzyme engineering projects, enabling us to iteratively refine predictive models.

Ginkgo has developed an AI tool, Owl, to fine-tune enzymes for a specialized role. An expansive data set provides the foundational architecture. To construct the intricate details, however, we employ data that is calibrated to the specific enzyme and its intended function. This enables Owl, our machine learning tool, to not merely “learn” but to “apply” its learnings, writing the intricate, detailed novel enzyme that our scientists require. Owl can “see in the dark” and discern viable paths in complex enzyme design landscapes.

Ginkgo’s approach to enzyme design isn’t merely data accumulation; it’s strategic data deployment. Our Foundry is equipped to generate an extensive range of high-quality biological data at scale. From DNA design and synthesis to high-throughput screening, we create vast data sets corroborating structure-function relationships. Owl thrives in this environment, allowing us to design enzyme variants tailored to our partners’ unique specifications, whether that’s enzyme activity, specificity, or other parameters.

As we navigate the complexities of enzyme design and optimization, think of Owl as the expert navigator and our robust data sets and data-generating capabilities as the compass and map. Together, they form a symbiotic alliance that not only challenges but also redefines the boundaries of traditional R&D.

Tackling Enzymes in Central Carbon Metabolism

The power of iteration and integration

Enzymes that regulate flux through Central Carbon Metabolism (CCM) are biological masterpieces. These proteins have been shaped by billions of years of evolutionary refinement to execute their functions with unmatched precision and, in many cases, maintain high sequence and structure conservation throughout the tree of life.

In one example of Owl-guided enzyme optimization, we were asked to improve the reaction kinetics of an enzyme involved in CCM. While this enzyme had been studied for the past 50 years, the best improvement we found in the literature was a 2-fold increase in the kcat/KM–catalytic efficiency; our customer needed a 10-fold improvement in the efficiency of this enzyme in order to meet their economic targets.

Our approach to this project leveraged our Foundry’s ability to generate and test large libraries of strains. In our initial data-generation phase, we created a first-generation library featuring 2,000 distinct enzyme variants crafted using a structure-based design, as well as semi-rational methods like active-site mutagenesis for targeted alterations. This is an important step because it generated a data set for initial Owl training. With this information in hand, we designed a second generation library to give Owl more information: we maintained the library size of the first but incorporated insights from the previous round, resulting in an exciting 3.9-fold improvement—a leap that surpassed anything we had seen before.

But the real improvements were just beginning. The third generation of this program brought us to a pivotal point in our optimization journey. Leveraging Owl’s predictive analytics, we strategically developed a broad library of 4,000 enzyme variants, generating diversity where it mattered most. The result was an unprecedented 4.5-fold improvement in enzyme efficiency, serving as a testament to Owl’s growing mastery in predictive capability.

Data from these three consecutive generations positioned us to make our biggest improvements yet. Given the data that our scientists had generated, Owl continued to generate increasingly sophisticated models of enzyme function. The final iteration culminated in a fourth generation where only 100 enzyme variants needed to be tested. The result, which marked the successful completion of this customer program, was astonishing: a 10-fold improvement in enzyme function, verified through meticulous arrayed activity assays and detailed protein characterization. By integrating the large data sets generated by Ginkgo’s cell engineering platform with Owl’s predictive power, we surpassed the bounds of natural evolution and decades of research reported in the literature meet our customer’s targets.

The Future of Enzyme Engineering

Large data and machine learning at Ginkgo Bioworks

The confluence of big data and AI accelerates the pace of innovation to unprecedented speeds. Ginkgo’s cell engineering platform is an ecosystem designed for generating expansive, high-quality data sets customized for complex biological inquiries. This data, in turn, fuels the predictive power of AI models. Together, they form a symbiotic relationship that enables us to challenge the limitations of natural evolution and traditional research methods.

As stakeholders in the biotechnology industry, navigating complex R&D challenges requires more than just robust tools; it requires effective partnerships. Ginkgo Bioworks offers the specialized machine learning models and data-generation capabilities necessary to advance your research and overcome bottlenecks. Our suite of resources is designed to integrate seamlessly with your objectives, providing actionable insights and solutions tailored to your specific challenges.

Ginkgo is investing in the future of AI for biotech: see our recent announcement with Google about developing foundation generative AI models for DNA and protein. Leverage our expertise and technology for your next project, and to join us in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in synthetic biology.

Start your Project

Scaling Production of Cultured THCV with Cronos Group

Posted on by Jason Kelly

Cronos and Ginkgo Announce Achievement of THCV Equity Milestone

Today, we’re excited to announce an achievement in our partnership with Cronos Group, an innovative global cannabinoid company. Together, we have hit the third target productivity milestone in our partnership to produce eight cultured cannabinoids. Using our platform for organism design and development, Cronos has successfully achieved the productivity target for tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV), a cannabinoid hypothesized to reduce the appetite-enhancing property of THC. Access to additional rare cannabinoids will support Cronos’ innovation pipeline and commercialization strategy.

Our partnership with Cronos launched in 2018, with the goal of accessing rare molecules in the cannabis plant to create innovative and differentiated products that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive. The program combines Cronos’ deep understanding of the biological structure and function of cannabinoids with our vast experience designing microorganisms for the production of cultured products across pharmaceuticals, agriculture and more.

Producing cultured cannabinoids at industrial scale

“Continuing to hit these productivity milestones in partnership with Ginkgo fuels our innovation pipeline focused on creating borderless products utilizing rare cannabinoids that amplify and differentiate the consumer experience,” said Mike Gorenstein, Chairman, President and CEO of Cronos. “We are excited about the possibilities that THCV is expected to give us and look forward to getting more products with rare cannabinoids into market.”

Working with Cronos to develop innovations in cannabis is an opportunity for us to apply synthetic biology in a way that is helping bring the cannabis industry forward and make a real impact on its market and the customers it serves. The progress we’ve made thus far in our collaboration is a true testament to both the potential of synthetic biology and the world-class teams at Cronos and Ginkgo.

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Expanding Our Platform Capabilities in Agricultural Biologicals and Launching Flagship Partnership with Bayer

Posted on by Anna Marie Wagner

Announcement Highlights:

  • Planned transaction expands Ginkgo’s horizontal platform capabilities to support agricultural biologicals R&D from discovery through formulation and early field trials and will offer services to allow access to customers of all sizes in the agriculture industry
  • Under the proposed transaction, Ginkgo to acquire Bayer’s West Sacramento agricultural biologicals site and team, adding a 175,000 square-foot R&D facility with pilot scale fermentation, formulation, and greenhouse facilities, along with access to Bayer’s large agricultural strain collection
  • Joyn Bio, the joint-venture between Ginkgo and Leaps by Bayer formed in 2017, to be integrated into the parent companies, with the core technology platform becoming part of Ginkgo’s platform and key products being advanced by Bayer in a new collaboration
  • Bayer to be an anchor customer of Ginkgo’s agricultural biologicals offering, signing a follow-on multi-year platform collaboration deal to enable continued development of Joyn Bio’s flagship nitrogen fixation program and launching new programs in fields including next-generation crop protection and carbon sequestration

We’re excited to announce plans to significantly expand our platform capabilities in agricultural biologicals from discovery to field. These capabilities will be built through a series of transactions; Ginkgo will acquire Bayer’s 175,000 square-foot West Sacramento Biologics Research & Development site, team, and internal discovery and lead optimization platform. Ginkgo will also integrate the R&D platform assets from Joyn Bio, a joint-venture between Ginkgo and Leaps by Bayer formed in 2017. Bayer will be the anchor agricultural customer of Ginkgo’s expanded platform, entering into a significant new multi-year collaboration which will focus on the advancement of Joyn’s marquee nitrogen fixation program as well as new programs in areas such as crop protection and carbon sequestration.

While Ginkgo will continue to evaluate the operating expenditures required to launch and scale its expanded agricultural capabilities following these transactions, it is expected that the cash proceeds from this multi-year collaboration with Bayer may significantly offset such anticipated expenditures. The proposed transactions are projected to close before the end of 2022, pending the finalization of definitive agreements and subject to regulatory approvals.

Agricultural biologicals are a rapidly growing category of solutions that offer tremendous sustainability and performance benefits. Against the backdrop of rising fertilizer costs and novel pest and disease threats, growers are calling for new agriculture solutions that can increase yields while decreasing their environmental footprint. While chemical and plant trait solutions have long been the dominant solutions on the market, demand for biologicals has increased dramatically.

Bayer, Ginkgo, and Joyn share a common vision, which is to enable biological products to be a critical part of the solution to the world’s greatest agricultural and environmental challenges. We are incredibly impressed by the success of the Joyn team and the deep expertise of Bayer’s West Sacramento R&D team and are thrilled to have them join Ginkgo as we build deep end-to-end capabilities in ag biologicals on top of our large scale horizontal platform. We believe we’re bringing together the most innovative minds in agriculture with the experience of a team that has brought several effective biological products to market for Bayer — opening this platform up to the world has the potential to truly revolutionize the field.

Bayer has long been committed to expanding its product offerings to benefit growers around the world. In recent years, the company has made a strategic decision to focus on becoming the preferred research, development, and commercial partner in the biologicals segment, while leveraging an “open innovation” model to be able to partner broadly with disruptive discovery companies.

Through this agreement, Bayer is committing to a significant multi-year collaboration, advancing multiple programs including a marquee nitrogen fixation program as well as a suite of other programs in areas such as next-generation crop protection and carbon sequestration.

“Biological solutions will play a critical role in the agricultural innovation ecosystem, and we see tremendous opportunity for biologicals to add even more value for agriculture in the future because they are effective and offer environmental benefits that producers want,” said Bob Reiter, Head of R&D for Bayer Crop Science. “Bayer is moving to strengthen its product development and commercial positioning through strategic research partnerships for new product development, and we are excited to deepen our relationship with Ginkgo, which we expect to be a key partner for many years to come.”

Over the last five years, Joyn has developed a new class of microbial solutions in partnership with Bayer and Ginkgo. Through this transaction, Joyn’s product concepts will be advanced by Bayer, with a particular focus on its nitrogen fixation program, while the platform assets and supporting team members will be integrated into Ginkgo as the company expands its support for agricultural biologicals.

Ginkgo will offer these new platform capabilities to a wide variety of customers in the agriculture space.

Ginkgo expects to provide a full stack of services in this field. This extension of our platform will allow companies of all sizes to access best-in-class lab-to-field translation expertise, greenhouse capacity, formulation capabilities, and pilot fermentation.

“With support from Ginkgo and Bayer, Joyn Bio has made groundbreaking discoveries across a number of programs that will be foundational for future work in biologicals,” said Michael Miille, CEO of Joyn Bio. “We are excited to take this platform to the next stage, with Bayer advancing key programs to the next level and working with Ginkgo to open our capabilities up to a broader set of commercial partners.”

The parties expect to sign a definitive agreement and proceed toward an efficient close, supported by ongoing integration planning efforts. More details and updates will be provided when available.

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

Discovering Novel Live Biotherapeutics with Microba

Posted on by Jennifer Wipf

What if you could use bacteria as therapeutics?

Microba Life Sciences, a precision microbiome science company, and Ginkgo announced a partnership to identify single-strain, live bacteria product (LBP) candidates against autoimmune diseases. The collaboration aims to build on Microba’s precision approach to LBP development with an in-depth evaluation of the company’s strains using Ginkgo’s high throughput, automated screening capabilities.

Microba will leverage Ginkgo’s high throughput screening capabilities to identify potential therapeutic candidates for autoimmune diseases.

The human gut microbiome is composed of trillions of bacteria that have an outsized influence on human health and disease. In recent years, scientists have developed a deeper understanding of the relationship between specific bacteria residing in the gut and various health outcomes, leading to a growing interest in using bacteria for therapeutic applications. Clinical trials using live biotherapeutics – biological products that contain live microorganisms applicable to the prevention, treatment, or cure of a disease – have delivered promising results.

There is growing consensus that live biotherapeutics may represent a major class of therapeutics in the coming years.

“We believe the human microbiome currently represents a missing piece in the treatment of major chronic diseases, and as a result a number of microbiome-based therapeutics are progressing through clinical development globally” said Luke Reid, CEO at Microba. “Ginkgo’s high throughput screening automation combined with our novel data-driven approach to therapeutic discovery from the microbiome can potentially accelerate development of breakthrough new drugs for autoimmune diseases.”

Leveraging Ginkgo’s platform to discover, develop, and optimize live biotherapeutics

Through this partnership, Ginkgo will provide high-throughput screening for Microba’s proprietary library of human microbiome-isolated strains, with the goal of improving treatment for autoimmune diseases such as lupus, psoriatic arthritis, and certain autoimmune liver diseases. Microba plans to leverage Ginkgo’s high-throughput anaerobic culturing, multi-omics data collection and analysis, functional bioassay screening, and media and fermentation optimization capabilities to generate data sets that may help characterize potential therapeutic and non-therapeutic uses of the strains. The initial partnership combining Microba’s biobank and Ginkgo’s anaerobic development capabilities is expected to run approximately two years.

Microba is doing truly innovative work during an exciting time for the field of microbiome science. We’re happy to welcome new partners like Microba as we apply our platform to more applications in the living therapeutics and microbiome space.

Microba plans to launch its initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Australian Securities Exchange on April 5. In connection with the partnership, Ginkgo is investing $3.5 million USD in Microba. The IPO was fully underwritten by Canaccord Genuity and Bell Potter.

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

Improving Production Efficiency for Vibrant Food Colors with Phytolon

Posted on by Jennifer Wipf

Phytolon and Ginkgo aim to leverage cell programming to produce vibrant betalain pigments across the full yellow-to-purple spectrum.

Scientists have developed hundreds of artificial food dyes by using the tools of synthetic chemistry to convert petrochemical sources into a wide range of colors. While artificial dyes are visually appealing and cheap to manufacture, many have been banned in food and feed due to health concerns. But now, the tools of synthetic biology offer an opportunity to tap into the vibrant colors of nature to produce more sustainable, yet equally vibrant, colors.

What if you could grow sustainable, vibrant dyes?

As consumers increasingly seek out more sustainable and nature-derived products, the food industry is working to find food colors that have equivalent pigment vibrancy to those found in petrochemical-based dyes but which come from biological sources. Phytolon, a growing startup company making natural food colorants, announced a partnership with Ginkgo today to produce vibrant cultured food colors via synthetic biology.

Phytolon has developed a proprietary process using precision fermentation of certain yeast strains to produce betalain pigments—red and yellow pigments naturally found in plants like beets and cactus fruit. Phytolon and Ginkgo are partnering with the goal of maximizing the production efficiency of purple and yellow betalain-producing strains to enable the creation of colors across the full “yellow-to-purple” spectrum. Under this partnership, Phytolon is leveraging Ginkgo’s ability to engineer biology at scale to work together on the production of these betalain pigments. The project aims to help maximize the business opportunity of Phytolon’s vibrant colors for applications in the food and cosmetics industries.

Synthetic biology helps make it possible to produce nature’s wide range of colors at scale.

“We’re excited to work with Ginkgo to develop natural food colors that can potentially outperform conventional artificial dyes in cost and performance,” says Dr. Tal Zeltzer, co-founder and CTO of Phytolon. “We believe biotechnology makes it possible to produce a wider range of colors than ever before that may outperform current benchmark colorants, and we look forward to building products that may meet and even exceed consumer expectations for healthier, sustainable foods, all while aiming to maintain industry requirements for high quality and cost-efficiency.”

We love enabling growing startups like Phytolon through our platform, using biotechnology to challenge industry norms and attempt to build a fundamentally better product than what’s on the market today. The planet needs new sustainable solutions, and we are excited to partner with Phytolon to support a more sustainable food system.

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

Improving the Manufacture of Biosynthetic Heparin with Optimvia

Posted on by James Waters

Optimvia will leverage Ginkgo’s cell and enzyme engineering platform as well as its fermentation process development expertise to improve the manufacture of biosynthetic heparin.

Heparin is a life-saving drug that prevents blood clots and is classified as an essential medicine by the World Health Organization. In addition to acting as an anticoagulant, it is important in treating a great number of medical issues, including adult respiratory distress syndrome, allergic rhinitis, asthma, and inflammatory bowel disease. Currently, however, it is isolated from animal sources, mostly pig or cattle, which are limited by livestock availability.

What if you could grow life-saving medicines on demand?

Optimvia is a biotechnology company specializing in engineering enzymes and their cofactors to synthesize complex therapeutic molecules. Ginkgo’s platform serves customers across industries seeking to develop new and better products using biotechnology, including partnerships to improve manufacturing processes and strengthen supply chains of key medicines. Producing non-animal derived heparin on Ginkgo’s platform is intended to be the proof of principle for Optimvia’s technology for the synthesis of sulfated glycans.

Enabling enzymatic manufacturing could create supply chain diversity and reduce or eliminate the need for high volume extraction of heparin from porcine intestines.

“The goal of producing biosynthetic heparin is similar to Genentech’s famous breakthrough of creating insulin through recombinant cell-based methods as opposed to relying on extraction from pig pancreas,” said Keith Kleeman, CEO, Optimvia. “We believe that combining Optimvia’s novel technology and Ginkgo’s capabilities will enable commercially viable, cost effective and safe biosynthetic heparin that could eliminate the world’s dependence on livestock sourced heparin entirely.”

Under this partnership, Optimvia seeks to leverage Ginkgo’s cell and enzyme engineering platform, as well as its fermentation process development expertise, to rapidly improve the performance of Optimvia’s biosynthetic heparin manufacturing technology.

“Ginkgo’s platform helps emerging startups develop and optimize their products and reach commercial scale,” said Ginkgo CEO Jason Kelly. “We’re pleased to welcome Optimvia as the newest member in our ecosystem. We believe scalable synthetic heparin could introduce much needed resiliency to the drug supply chain, improve access to this essential medicine, and reduce our dependence on industrial animal agriculture.”

Read the full press release here.