(upbeat music)
- Thanks for being here, Raymond.
- So great to be here.
- Yeah, it's always very fun talking with you.
- Thank you.
- And so, people here are talking about biomanufacturing.
A lot of people don't know what that means though,
like what is biomanufacturing and how new is it?
- It's, actually it's been around for about 10,000 years.
So, we can't say it's new on the scene.
- [Alison] Whoops.
- Yeah, but you know nobody really thinks of it that way,
because whenever we look at all the ways
we make wine and beer and that's actually some
of the oldest technology humans have.
Well this is because, you know, we hijacked yeast
and made it ferment things.
And a lot of food that we have is fermented.
Now, we're just getting really, really good at it.
And not just, I mean, making good craft beer,
because you can do that too.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- But, we can engineer these organisms to either
produce different things for us.
Biofuels, bioplastics, food additives, cosmetics,
specialized chemicals, medicines.
We can also go ahead and engineer them to be sensors
to sort of be watch dogs in the environment
to let us know if something is going on.
- [Alison] Like, out sensing in like the atmosphere?
- Yeah, yeah, well in a couple ways.
So, you know, the whole idea of sort of having something
out in the environment and maybe in water,
maybe in air, maybe sitting on your countertop,
to let you know that there's a high level of toxins.
Kind of, the thought of a smoke alarm, a C02 alarm,
but for everything that you don't want in your house.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- That's one way it goes.
And another way is whenever we start thinking about sensors,
really we get closer and closer to,
and this is a little bit of a step,
but nanoengineering, you know.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- So, if we can go ahead and produce
sophisticated sensors and warning systems,
what we're really doing is making little computers
in the environment.
And the interesting thing about biological computers
is not how much memory they have, how fast they are,
it's where they compute.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- So, at some point maybe you've got a sensor
on your food packaging.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- That says, you know, not just this cheese is good or bad,
but this cheese has seven days left.
(Alison laughing)
Or, this is at it's best taste.
- Eat me now.
- Yeah, exactly, a little Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland there.
- That's cool.
And so, what are some like practical applications
of biotech in manufacturing today?
- Well, we're starting to see more and more
people have been using it as a marketing way to be green.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- And that's fantastic and, you know, where everybody cares.
We're more conscious about what we buy.
So, maybe you're flying on an airline
that's got a certain amount of biofuels.
It's a sustainable way.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- Or maybe, you know, you're buying a product
where the packaging is made from some bioplastic.
The Coca-Cola plant bottle is a great example.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- But now, it's not even just a marketing thing,
'cause sometimes there's a mark up to get it to happen.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- It's a way that we're doing cheaper and cheaper
feed stock materials.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- So, almost any detergent that you use,
that was probably biomanufactured.
And more and more things like soaps, degreasers,
and some of these things have biological activity.
But where we're really getting is,
if you want to process a recycling stream.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- You know, and something as simple as grinding up plastic
so it doesn't go in the ocean.
And then go ahead and cooking it down
and reforming it into new plastic.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- That's a great way.
Something that's complex is if you've got
a smart phone and everybody does.
And you turn that over, you know,
maybe two years, maybe six months.
It kind of depends.
And then, what happens to all those
really complex components?
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- Right now, you probably get rid of it.
If you don't throw it in the trash,
that's irresponsible, right?
Somebody recycles it and they start pulling
the components off in India or someplace.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- And they're breathing in toxic dust, it's a mess.
- [Alison] Yeah.
- And what you really want to do is not have
that environmental problem, that health problem.
You'd really even more to, like,
to recover those materials and reuse them again.
Some of that's really expensive, really tactical.
So, what if we grind up all those cellphones
and put them into a little bit of goop,
where bio-organisms are going and pulling out
the different materials so they can be reused.
And that's an example.
- And are there any companies that you have your eye on
or start-ups that you've come across
that you think have some, like, intriguing or novel product?
- Yeah, there's, man there's so many different ones.
The thing that I'm actually so impressed with
is the startup ecosystem.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- So, being able to see who's doing what.
And there are so many little companies
that are doing the work of what used to be
big and maybe some medium sized companies.
So, a two person startup can really compete.
IndieBio in San Francisco is such a great example
of a place where they've got
a funnel where they're just bringing
in people working in materials, food,
medicine, and kind of giving them a launch pad to start.
Lab space and fantastic attention.
People who go through IndieBio,
it's kind of the wide combinator of biotech.
- Yeah, it definitely seems like it's become that.
- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- Yeah, and I think it speaks to just the
huge ecosystem in the Bay area of biotech.
- Mm-hmm, and so many more.
We're starting to see some of the biohacker spaces.
A lot of those are for education,
but a lot of them are commercial now.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- And people will even zero in on one specific piece
where they're like, well, we've got this IP.
Who are other people who are working in the field?
- [Alison] Yeah.
- So, you have really little ones.
There's some in San Diego that are working on exosomes,
which is this vanishingly small, narrow field,
but quite a great way to concentrate
all the talent that way.
- What is a exosome?
- An exosome?
It's kind of funny, it's a little greasy bubble.
But, it's important because it floats around
in your bloodstream, for instance,
and it can deliver drugs.
- It can float around in the environment
and protect the things that are inside of it.
And so, it's a way that people have been using
to practice drug delivery, DNA delivery.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- We're seeing things like that.
And then, on the other end of that scale, Johnson & Johnson?
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- They've got Janssen Labs.
- [Alison] Right.
- That's sort of taking the biohacker concept and saying,
well what would that look like
if a huge corporation executed that
in twelve different centers around the world?
I think they've got 2,000 companies now
that have been in residence and have graduated
from Janssen Labs.
- Wow, and so yeah this makes me think
this is really interesting tension
between the biohacker movement and biotech,
which is kind of fringe, funky,
into hacking and new solutions.
Then you have manufacturing and the more corporate
way of doing things.
And they're kind of coming together in some scenarios.
Like, how do you think that tension can play
with each other in a positive way?
- Yeah, yeah, and sometimes yeah the biohacker movement
is a little proud sometimes of its, like, leather jacket.
- Like, rebel. - Sunglass swagger.
And sometimes it's a little bit about attention
and blog posts, and that's okay.
But, it's really interesting to see big corporations,
which tend to move along very slowly
and kind of clunk in place.
Well, it's, those guys are the dinosaurs,
and I mean that in a good way.
They're towering and powerful, right?
And then, the biohackers are sort of the mammals
scurrying around their feet and they're going out
and finding new things and bringing it back.
And so, every once in a while a mammal will get stepped on,
you know, but the little mammals are kind of evolving.
They're getting good at exploring that space.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- And where the real power is, is when the two meet,
and meet constructively, like you said.
- [Alison] In a constructive way, yeah.
- Yeah, that some of it is,
you know, and this is a very singularity
university way of doing things.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- We have small startups.
People who are new in the field,
or very interdisciplinary,
exploring new ways to do things.
Then we have large corporations that have money
or marketing or old expertise.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- And whenever they can get together
and use the best of each other they inform.
- [Alison] Yeah.
- Both sides and when they meet in the middle
is where new things happen.
- [Alison] That's the magic.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, and so just to kind of wrap things up I guess,
what are your hopes for how biotech could really
impact manufacturing in our future?
Do you have kind of a horizon in 10 years
that you're hoping will come true?
- Yeah, I think in 10 years most products
that are manufactured that are not just
straight out bending metal,
and most things that are bending metal
maybe get a little replaced by something
that looks like some sort of admixture of smart materials.
- [Alison] Yeah.
- And I think we're going to start to see
significant end runs.
We're gonna be at the beginning of that S-curve.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- Where most things are biologically manufactured.
Almost everything is biologically rendered
to be recycled, to be tracked.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- We're gonna see some really weird ways
where biology is being used.
I just saw there are two new companies
I just found out about in the last couple of days
that are using DNA to tag manufactured goods.
- Wow. - DNA is the ultimate barcode.
And it gets cheaper and cheaper to read it, why not use it?
And it's becomes a way to authenticate and trace
and do all kinds of things.
So, some of these weird ways where biology will
sort of leap the boundaries.
But, really in about 20 years I would be wholly surprised
if we didn't have very decentralized manufacturing
of materials and ways to grow very complex substrates.
What we would think of as machines and computers.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- You know, so very science fictional future.
- Yeah, yeah I think, can you comment at all
on some of the new synthetic materials
that are being built in biotech?
- Yeah, yeah, one of my favorite ones is
what's going on with bolt threads.
- [Alison] Okay.
- Right now, and that's just amazing.
They've been working and working.
They're sort of a, maybe a seven year
overnight success story.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- But they've been quietly working about how
to make spider silk by reprogramming yeast.
- [Alison] Mm-hmm.
- And so, they've done it.
And they've got not just the ability
to make it in large quantities,
but the ability to tune the properties of the materials.
- [Alison] Wow.
- Yeah, so you can make a silk that would carry water
or not it would be stretchier or stronger,
have a better sheer strength, better twist strength.
And so ,they can kind of navigate all
the space of possible properties
and make something to order,
and that really looks interesting.
You know, think about having a, I don't know,
a little bullet proof onesie for your kids or something.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Or a wetsuit for surfing where you never get cold.
- Exactly, and very doable.
I mean, that would be a great biological
bio-mimicry kind of thing to do.
- Wonderful.
Raymond, talking with you is always so much fun.
Thank you so much.
- For me too, thanks Alison.
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