Category: Strain Optimization Services

Humans of Ginkgo: Nádia Parachin Talks Bioproduction

Posted on by Sudeep Agarwala

Ginkgo Bioworks’ cell engineering platform lowers the bar for entry into developing products through metabolic engineering.

High-throughput strain design and testing on industry-leading chassis strains, paired with AI-enhanced enzyme engineering tools provides Ginkgo’s partners rapid prototyping and development. Nádia Parachin, Senior Director of Business Development at Ginkgo discusses how this streamlined process enables quicker market entry, fostering a lower barrier to bringing new products to market.

Humans of Ginkgo is an interview series featuring Sudeep Agarwala interviewing some of the brilliant folks at Ginkgo to learn more about the technology that makes our work possible.

Sudeep Agarwala: You’ve run projects for quite some time at Ginkgo, but before that, were spanning both academia and industry, correct?

Nádia Parachin: Well I’ve been at Ginkgo for almost four years now, but you’re right–I came to Ginkgo from Brazil. In Brazil, I was a professor at Universidade de Brasilia and at the same time, I was the Co-Founder and CEO of Integra Bioprocessors. Integra used metabolic engineering to convert agro-residues (glycerol, for example) into high-value chemicals. And in fact, two of the technologies that we co-developed at Integra and UnB was a microbial strain producing PLA from glycerol and another strain producing Hyaluronic acid from sugar.

But that also naturally led to this position at Ginkgo. Since 2020, I have run quite a few projects at Ginkgo through the Foundry in yeast–Saccharomyces cerevisiae. What can I say? It’s my favorite yeast.

SA: Recently you’ve made an interesting shift–you’ve moved over to the commercial side, thinking about how Ginkgo’s platform can be applied widely to different companies?

NP: What is most impressive to see at Ginkgo during these years is not only once but–to my knowledge–at least a few times, the production of molecules that have never been made in a microbial host before. I’ve seen the same for enzymatic reactions. At Ginkgo, we demonstrated reactions not found in nature, truly contributing to the company’s mission of making biology easier to engineer. 

The reason for these success stories is the combination of our physical platform–automated, high-throughput strain design, construction, and testing– paired with our digital assets– incredible database of enzyme engineering experimental results and now AI-enabled engineering tools.  An equal player in this is the expertise of the people who run these workflows and design the experiments at Ginkgo. We have a collection of people who have deep knowledge of the different microbial hosts and have been working for years on critical pathways and developing tools to make this engineering possible.

What I find exciting about being on the commercial team is that my team’s technical expertise can be teamed up with people who have a real understanding of the market, resulting in tailor-made offers for what the market demands. It has been a fun journey, and I’m thrilled to be part of this team.

SA: Maybe to go into more detail here, what exactly does Ginkgo provide to its partners?

NP: Ginkgo provides our partners with a head start–partially because of the platform and our knowledge-base–technical assets we’ve collected over the years. So if a partner comes to us and wants to make an innovation in their field, they don’t have to invest in their own lab space, expensive specialized equipment, etc. They can get started very quickly by leveraging Ginkgo’s R&D capabilities and running experiments for a fraction of the cost of building a lab from scratch. This means they have a lower barrier to explore which  product has the potential to make a real difference in the market. 

We’re also providing value to the companies already in the field, who are already doing synthetic biology and fermentation. These companies know what they are doing in terms of their technology, their market. They have a good understanding of their processes for commercialization. But with our expertise, we can take on newer, earlier-stage projects instead of these companies having to rearrange their internal R&D: let us do your innovation, and when the technology is mature, you can incorporate it into your pipeline–you do the manufacturing and the commercialization.

SA: I’m curious about the difference between Ginkgo and CROs. When does it make sense to come to Ginkgo vs. say, going to a CRO?

NP: We see this question come up all the time. The most important difference is that besides our platform and a proprietary database, Ginkgo has developed and owns what we call “chassis” strains: microbial hosts that have been modified for increasing flux throughout key metabolic pathways.

Take the shikimate pathway, for example. This pathway can produce multiple molecules, ranging from building blocks for polymer production to flavors, fragrances, and nutraceuticals.

When you go to a CRO to engineer a product off the shikimate pathway, you have to start from scratch to develop dedicated enzymes for your target’s pathway. In parallel, you also have to develop a strain that will have a high flux through the shikimate pathway to get your product to your target titers.

But when you’re working with Ginkgo, our starting point is lightyears ahead. We’ve already developed the base assets, our ‘chassis’ strains that have flux through the shikimate pathway at very high levels. So now we dedicate our work to the specific part of our customer’s pathway that converts this flux into their target molecule. And because it’s only this part, we can deliver both prototyping and strain development faster than any other CRO. 

I’m talking about the shikimate pathway here, but it also applies towards fatty acid metabolism, terpenes, any range of pathways that you’re engineering off of. You’re not starting from scratch–you have the starting strain, the platform, the enzyme engineering capabilities, and that gives you a head start towards commercialization. 

SA: So this is a compelling reason for leveraging Ginkgo’s platform, but I’m curious what happens if too many people start to do that. Like you’ve acknowledged, there’s a big market in metabolic engineering for small molecules. How does Ginkgo think about protecting information between different companies who are coming to Ginkgo?

NP: This has come up a few times as a major concern from people who are talking to us. We’ve had partners who have said “Look, I know you guys have a project with my competition. Can you guarantee that there’s not going to be any sharing of my information?”

And one of my arguments for the companies in industrial biology has been that we aren’t just doing small molecules: we have pharmaceutical companies on the platform–that’s the standard that we’re working with to ensure that there’s no sharing of information between different projects for different companies. We have that capability and we take it very seriously. We’ve developed systems internally that flag information so that it cannot be shared and that data that results from one customer’s project cannot be shared.

The entire point is that Ginkgo prepared itself over the years to be positioned at the cutting-edge of synthetic biology technology, and we’re working towards utilizing the platform to enable the sustainable production of biomolecules applied to several industrial sectors. It’s not just about engineering strains, it’s also about creating a bioeconomy and seeing it thrive. And we’ve made it possible so people can develop their strains and bring their products to market with confidence that they’ll be competitive.

Work with Us

Nádia Skorupa Parachin, Ph.D., is Senior Director of business Development at Ginkgo Bioworks, leading the Industrial Biotechnology sales team for the production of small molecules. Nádia brings over 15 years of experience in synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, and project management. She has previously served on the technical team at Ginkgo as a Senior Program Lead, engineering and delivering custom strains for Ginkgo’s partners. Before joining Ginkgo Bioworks, she was CEO of Integra Bioprocessors and a professor of biotechnology at Universidade de Brasilia (UnB).

Strain Engineering and Process Development to Deliver Enzyme Expression Systems

Posted on by Sudeep Agarwala

Our partner encountered a bottleneck in accessing and producing a key enzyme required for scaling-up their vaccines.

By leveraging Ginkgo’s cell engineering platform, our partner was able to develop an E. coli expression system for their enzyme expression. Combined with fermentation and processing protocol, we achieved a ten-fold increase in efficiency within a year.

Strain Engineering for Bio-Based Industries

Enzymes play a crucial role where traditional chemical methods are inadequate. Perfected through millions of years of evolution, these biological catalysts guide cellular processes with unparalleled precision. The capacity to extract these proteins from their natural environment and employ them to catalyze specific reactions has sparked a revolution across various industries, spanning from basic chemicals to pharmaceutical drug manufacturing. Industry stakeholders have recognized that substituting traditional exotic chemical catalysts with enzyme-based solutions often provides more adaptable, powerful, and cost-efficient alternatives for product development, while also potentially diminishing their ecological footprint. To preserve their competitive advantage, companies persistently seek innovative approaches to enhance enzyme production processes.

Ginkgo Bioworks’ Cell Engineering platform streamlines biological engineering via state-of-the-art, well-developed workflows. While traditional strain engineering can be a protracted and high-risk endeavor, our approach involves organizing our extensive experience and knowledge base into these workflows, resulting in a more efficient path for developing industrially-relevant strains and processes. This structured approach not only reduces the time spent searching for solutions but also empowers our partners with best in-class strain engineering for accelerating their product development, and ultimately, scaling to commercial manufacture.

The Challenge: Overcoming Enzyme Supply Constraints for Vaccine Production

Our partner, advancing vaccine production to meet global demands, faced supply chain limitations with a critical enzyme needed for their manufacturing process. Despite exploring commercial sources, they encountered a shortage. In-house production attempts fell short of scale-up requirements, highlighting a pressing need for a commercially viable production method for this essential enzyme.

Our Work: From Sequence to Manufacturing in less than One Year

We approached our partner’s protein expression problem by initiating two concurrent workflows: first, a Strain Engineering workflow was deployed, aimed at identifying elements that optimized the expression of their enzyme in E. coli. 

Design: We developed a very targeted library of roughly 300 DNA expression constructs that we predicted would have a high probability of improving enzyme expression. The library tested different DNA recodings of the protein (while maintaining amino acid sequence), promoters, plasmid backbones, ribozyme variants, and ribosome binding sites (RBSs).

Build: Within weeks of designing these constructs, our in-house DNA synthesis team delivered these plasmids, which were transformed into the E. coli expression host.

Test: By the time these strains were constructed, we had developed a targeted set of enzyme titer and activity assays. We screened the ~300 member library for enzyme expression of each of these library members, selecting the top-producing strains according to our assay. 

Simultaneously, we launched the Fermentation Process Development workflow alongside strain engineering. Initially, we pinpointed critical fermentation parameters, and used statistical techniques (Design of Experiment–DoE) to optimize the process based on identified parameters. By the time we established an effective protocol, strain engineering had identified promising candidates suited for this optimized fermentation.

Our Process Development team selected the best-performing strain and began industrializing the fermentation process to guarantee scalability. This phase focused on adapting our development to meet large-scale production needs, addressing potential scale-up challenges in advance.

This involved tailoring the fermentation media to support regulatory requirements for vaccine manufacturing. In doing so, this workstream also monitored the robustness of the fermentation feed profile making sure that the strain we were using was genetically stable throughout the entire fermentation run.

This dual workflow strategy ensured continuous knowledge exchange between the two streams of development, allowing us to effectively inform and enhance each phase. This synergy enabled us to deliver a scalable solution to our partner within their timeline.

The Outcome: Empowering a vaccine-manufacturing breakthrough

  • Rapid Results: In under a year, our partner saw a 10-fold increase in protein yield from their starting point due to an optimized strain and fermentation process.
  • Strain Engineering Success: Within the first six months, a single Design-Build-Test cycle reduced 300 potential strains to 22, achieving a 5-fold yield improvement.
  • Fermentation Optimization: From the 22 strains, a single top performer was selected through Fermentation Process Development, performing well in scaled fermentation.
  • Overall Improvement: The combined optimization efforts led to a 10-fold improvement over the initial strain, with industrialization ensuring scalability.
  • Knowledge Transfer: The final two months focused on transferring our findings, enabling our partner to significantly surpass their previous year’s enzyme production in a single run.
  • Market Entry: Leveraging exclusive rights to the newly developed process, our partner scaled up production to enter the global vaccine market.

Our Capabilities:

  • Rational Strain Engineering: Ginkgo’s library of DNA parts and experience with a wide variety of host organisms means shorter development time and higher probability of success. Paired with analytics, Ginkgo’s Cell Engineering Platform, efficiently executes Design-Build-Test workflows to identify top-performing strains.
  • Streamlined R&D: Pairing strain development with process development identifies strains that not only function well in the laboratory but translates that activity into the fermentation tank and industrial setting.
  • Industrial Optimization: Development workflows take into account the constraints of manufacturing products at scale from developing industry-relevant protocols to monitoring genetic stability at scale.
  • Tech Transfer: Successful projects require smooth integration into our partners’ pipelines. Our engineers are experienced in developing knowledge transfers and troubleshooting, empowering our partners with the technology we develop.

Work With Us

Ginkgo Bioworks’ Cell Engineering Platform brings actionable bio-based solutions.

Start your project here.

Advancing OneOne Biosciences’ Platform and Nitrogen Fixation Microbial Product

Posted on by Magalie Guilhabert

Today we’re thrilled to announce our partnership with OneOne Biosciences, a French startup building a comprehensive suite of agricultural microbial solutions for farmers!

This collaboration will leverage our robust ag biologicals infrastructure, biotechnological expertise, and Strain Optimization Services to accelerate OneOne’s research and product development in agricultural microbial solutions.

OneOne’s mission is to equip growers with bio-based agricultural inputs characterized by both exceptional effectiveness and longevity. Central to this mission is OneOne’s development of a novel, universal solution for production and delivery of ag microbials through the OneOne Multiplier™, a user-friendly “espresso machine-type” device that amplifies microbes at the point of use. Users can insert OneOne Livepods™ into the Multiplier to aseptically prepare microbials, which can then be applied directly to crops. Livepods are designed to come loaded with microbes that are tailored for specific-use cases — e.g. nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, crop protection, drought resistance, carbon sequestration, and more. This fresh approach, combined with other species-independent innovative components, aims to be forward compatible with future data-based product personalization, parametrized by individual crop and soil characteristics.

OneOne’s initial focus is on developing a Livepod for nitrogen fixation, a roughly $100 billion market. OneOne will work with Ginkgo for in vitro and in planta assays to test OneOne’s concept. In a second phase, Ginkgo plans to use its Strain Optimization Services and ultra high throughput encapsulated screening to provide optimized strains for nitrogen fixation. The strains may then progress to field trials and regulatory preparations before commercialization.

“We are building a platform to provide growers with a complete range of microbial solutions beneficial to their crops, soils, and bottom lines. We expect our products to maximize long-term agronomic performance and farmer ROI. We are excited by this strategic partnership with Ginkgo, as we believe they are the only player capable of bringing all the expertise, infrastructure, and experience needed to ensure effective and efficient handling of key lines of our ag biologicals research and product development. We are confident that Ginkgo’s comprehensive services can generate valuable strain assets and reduce time-to-market. We look forward to contributing to the ongoing transition from chemicals towards bio-based solutions in the agricultural space, as is happening in other large industries. We expect that, at scale, this transition can and will drive significant net positives for economies and the environment in years to come.”

OneOne’s founder and CEO, Julien Sylvestre

Our partnership underscores the growing role of synbio in agriculture.

We’re thrilled to assist OneOne in demonstrating their concept and to apply our deep experience with nitrogen fixation as we seek to deliver successful strains for their Livepods. We firmly believe ag biologicals represent the future of sustainable, successful agriculture, and we are eager to support innovators like OneOne in entering the market with cutting-edge solutions.

We are also so excited to welcome OneOne’s founder and CEO, Julien Sylvestre, to the stage at our Ferment 2024 conference!

You can learn more about Ferment 2024 here!

To learn more about Ginkgo Strain Optimization Services, please visit https://www.ginkgobioworks.com/offerings/strain-optimization-services

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Accelerating Next-Gen Ag Biological Products with Agrivalle

Posted on by Jason Kelly

We’re thrilled to announce our new partnership with Agrivalle, a leading Brazilian agricultural biologicals company!

Together, we plan to build cutting edge technologies that can advance Agrivalle’s biological products, including next-gen fertilizers and biocontrol agents.

Start your project

Ginkgo is bringing its suite of advanced biology tools to this partnership.

Our Strain Optimization Services will be leveraged to improve the efficacy of Agrivalle’s biocontrol products. In planned future projects, we intend to work with Agrivalle to discover and optimize plant-compatible microbes that can provide crop nutrition, and to engineer organisms that can make compounds to specifically target certain pests. This, in turn, could help Agrivalle enhance the breadth and efficacy of their novel biological products and enable them to sell and license products to major players in agriculture across the globe.

Growers continue to have an increased need for effective and sustainable alternatives to pest control products.

Brazil has been home to massive growth in biologicals, thanks in part to regulatory frameworks that encourage innovation in the development of biologicals for sustainable agriculture. The Brazilian government has also made it easier for startups to finance manufacturing plants and to register biological products. This has led the country to become the largest biologicals market for agriculture, growing over 30% a year.

We are so excited to partner with Agrivalle on getting groundbreaking biological products into the hands of growers. Agrivalle is a vanguard of innovation in Brazil with proven R&D, manufacturing, and sales prowess, and we’re thrilled to help them optimize and advance their products as they seek to expand globally.

“Choosing Ginkgo as a strategic partner will enable Agrivalle products to be at the forefront of agricultural excellence. Having access to Ginkgo’s demonstrated technical capabilities and expertise in biologicals R&D will help us take our products to the next level and support growers who seek superior bio-based technology.”

André Kraide, CEO of Agrivalle
Start your project

To learn more about Ginkgo Strain Optimization Services, please visit https://www.ginkgobioworks.com/offerings/strain-optimization-services/.

Enhancing Meaty Taste of Mycoprotein with Nosh.bio

Posted on by Ginkgo Bioworks

 

Today we’re so excited to announce a new partnership with Nosh.bio, a German startup developing highly functional ingredients from fungal biomass for animal-free products. Nosh.bio will leverage our Ginkgo Strain Optimization Services to screen for protein-producing fungi strains with superior sensorial profiles. By leveraging Ginkgo’s ultra high throughput encapsulated screening capabilities, the program aims to produce a mycoprotein that delivers a rich, savory, and natural meaty taste when used in food products.

The Challenges with Animal-Free Protein

Companies developing animal-free protein still face challenges in creating tastier, less processed, and affordable alternative-protein products. Nosh.bio has built a technological platform that uses fungal biomass to create animal-free single-ingredient animal meat alternatives from mycoprotein for human nutrition.

For meat-alternatives, red meat — like a juicy steak — remains the most challenging product to be developed, and current alternatives contain many ingredients and chemical additives. Nosh.bio aims to leverage their highly efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective production process to create a single-ingredient animal-free product that tastes and feels just like red meat, while being healthier than an animal product.

Ginkgo Strain Optimization Services

To enable this advanced alt-protein product, Ginkgo aims to discover and deliver a strain of fungi with higher native proteins involved in achieving the rich meat taste, juiciness, and color that Nosh.bio is seeking. To do so, we plan to execute a mutagenesis and screening campaign with our proprietary encapsulation and screening technology (EncapS). This can make it possible to search through up to 1 million strain variants in a single run and select the best performing candidates for further development. Using such an improved strain can help Nosh.bio develop a mycoprotein that is superior in taste, color, performance, and nutrition.

“Nosh.bio is eager to enable the transition from animal-based to animal-free products. Our affordable, high quality plant-based ingredients can build a product that’s even closer to meat in taste and texture than alt-protein options currently on the market,” said Tim Fronzek, CEO and Co-Founder of Nosh.bio. “What really excites us about partnering with Ginkgo is their accelerated screening technology that can help us pinpoint and develop a super ‘meaty’ mycoprotein.”

Leveling Up the Alt-Meat Protein Industry

We’re thrilled to partner with Nosh.bio and help level-up the alt-meat protein industry to deliver sustainable products that taste closer to real meat than ever before. Our proprietary encapsulation and screening technology can expeditiously deliver valuable insights that enable our partners to optimize their R&D efforts and overall product.

To learn more about Ginkgo Strain Optimization Services, please visit https://www.ginkgobioworks.com/offerings/strain-optimization-services/.

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

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

AgBiome Leverages Ginkgo Strain Optimization Services

Posted on by Magalie Guilhabert

Today we’re announcing a partnership with AgBiome, a leader in global microbial innovation.

The aim is to optimize the performance of products in AgBiome’s pipeline of agricultural biologicals. Organizations developing next generation agricultural inputs can access our platform to accelerate discovery and deployment of new products.

By leveraging Ginkgo’s Strain Optimization Services, AgBiome aims to provide growers with new and improved live microbial strain products.

The biological crop protection market has significantly grown in recent years. Growers have increasingly sought effective and sustainable alternatives to synthetic pest control products. By leveraging our suite of advanced biology tools, AgBiome aims to enhance the breadth and efficacy of novel biological products.

We believe we can identify improved variants at massive scale.

That can help deliver more potent agricultural biologicals and bring the next generation of products to market. We are thrilled to work with an industry leader like AgBiome as we seek to optimize live microbial strain products in their pipeline and provide even better solutions to growers around the world.

“AgBiome is committed to creating the most effective crop protection products, and we are always looking for new technologies to enable better performance. We are excited to utilize Ginkgo’s capabilities in ultra high throughput assay development to evolve the next generation of biologicals as we continue to provide growers with improved product efficacy.”

-Scott Uknes, Co-founder and Co-CEO of AgBiome

Ginkgo’s ultra high throughput encapsulated screening technology:

  • Makes it possible to search through up to 1 million strain variants in a single run
  • Selects the best performing candidates for further development
  • Is built on nanoliter encapsulation technology, and thus provides nanoscale growth and assay compartments
  • Makes it possible to greatly reduce the screening time for large libraries

 

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

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Natural Colors with Octarine Bio

Posted on by Ena Cratsenburg

Strain engineering for violacein production

Today, we’re announcing a multi-stage partnership with Octarine Bio, a synthetic biology company developing new sustainable bio-based ingredients. We’ll work to engineer a strain to produce violacein – a naturally occurring pigment with anti-microbial, anti-oxidant, and UV protective properties.

The vast majority of textiles are still produced with synthetic colors and dyes derived from fossil fuels, a practice that has been linked to negative effects to human health and the environment.

Our expertise in strain engineering presents a significant opportunity for Octarine to introduce new bioactive colors and dyes to the market that address the consumer desires for safer, healthier, and more sustainable alternatives.

Contributing to the sustainability of the fashion industry

Natural colors and dyes constitute a significant and expanding market, especially given the heightened awareness from companies and the concerns of consumers about the harmful effects of conventional manufacturing processes. We are excited to be working with Octarine as we aim to produce a new class of safer, high-performing colors and dyes that will appeal to consumers and companies worldwide.

“We are thrilled to work with Ginkgo to improve the bio-based production process for our tryptophan program, focusing on a class of highly sought after natural colors and dyes in difficult to source color spectra. We see tremendous potential to apply these natural pigments as bio-based dyes, one of the fastest growing categories in the global textile market, and look forward to leveraging the Ginkgo platform to accelerate its development.”

Dr. Nethaji Gallage, Co-founder & CEO at Octarine

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Sustainable, Carbon-Negative Materials with Visolis

Posted on by Ena Cratsenburg

Improving production of bio-based isoprene with Ginkgo strain optimization services

Today we are pleased to announce our partnership with Visolis, a company combining advanced bioengineering with chemical catalysis to provide sustainable, carbon-negative materials.

With this partnership, we aim to use our extensive capabilities in strain engineering to improve upon one of Visolis’ existing microbial strains. This strain produces a key feedstock ingredient used to make bio-based isoprene and sustainable aviation fuels.

Isoprene is a key monomer used for commercial scale synthetic rubber production. Achieving the production of bio-based isoprene at scale represents a significant step toward decarbonizing tire manufacturing. Isoprene can also be used as an intermediate for high performance, lower carbon intensity sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production. Visolis’ production efforts are geared towards providing molecules with higher energy density, lower viscosity and better compatibility with engines than traditional SAF processes. Visolis’ SAF has the potential to work synergistically with these other processes to enable aviation through a 100% sustainable fuel. Through our partnership, we are working together to further optimize the efficiency of this biomanufacturing process.

“We are incredibly proud of our platform that is producing carbon-negative materials and fuels,” said Deepak Dugar, founder and CEO at Visolis. “As we strive to continue improving our technology towards commercial readiness, partnering with Ginkgo to accelerate our progress just makes sense. With their large codebase of strains and pathway expertise, which can shorten strain engineering cycles, as well as their scalable foundry capabilities, we believe we can work towards bringing our process to the next level.”

Visolis has demonstrated early success in scaling production of isoprene because of their ingenuity in combining bioengineering and chemical processing. We’re thrilled to collaborate with Visolis to optimize this innovative and sustainable process with the power of synthetic biology. This is exactly the kind of positive change that bioengineering can bring to industry.

Get in touch with the Ginkgo team today to discuss your R&D challenges!

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Optimizing Enzyme Expression and Performance with Zymtronix

Posted on by Ena Cratsenburg

Optimizing enzymes for Zymtronix’s cell-free manufacturing platform

Today we are pleased to announce our partnership with Zymtronix, a developer of cell-free process technologies. Together we aim to optimize enzymes used in Zymtronix’s proprietary cell-free platform for the production of important ingredients in food, agriculture, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

Enzymatic biocatalysis is a powerful manufacturing technology that can enable the production of a wide range of chemicals and molecules. Zymtronix’s cell-free platform is designed to solve challenges associated with traditional biocatalysis and seeks to enable the production of a wide range of products with precision and productivity. By partnering with us to build and produce bioengineered market-ready enzymes, Zymtronix anticipates being able to extend its solutions into the pharma, nutrition, agriculture markets, among others.

Zymtronix aims to leverage Ginkgo Enzyme Services to discover, optimize, and produce enzymes

Ginkgo Enzyme Services offers partners end-to-end support for the discovery, optimization, and production of enzymes for diverse applications. Through the partnership, we will leverage our suite of enzyme services to engineer enzymes for Zymtronix’s applications using metagenomic enzyme discovery as well as improve enzyme expression and production host performance.

We’re thrilled to welcome Zymtronix to the platform and support their applications in sustainable ingredients and beyond. We’ve built out our platform to serve a wide variety of enzyme discovery, engineering, optimization and scale up efforts, and we’re so excited for the work to come in this partnership. Zymtronix’s cell-free biomanufacturing platform is pioneering solutions for various industries, and we’re eager to leverage our end-to-end capabilities and help expand its efforts in transforming the way enzymes are used.

“This partnership will greatly accelerate our work of bringing the precision and scalability of cell-free biomanufacturing and sustainable ingredients to market starting with alternatives to animal sources; Ginkgo is uniquely able to support us with both enzyme engineering and strain expression, helping us continue to accelerate commercialization,” said Stéphane Corgié, CEO-CTO and founder, Zymtronix. “We hope to extend this partnership in the future to facilitate the production of multiple end-market products.”

To learn more about Ginkgo Enzyme Services, please visit ginkgobioworks.com/enzyme-services/.

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

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

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?