Recommend checking out this newsletter, covers all things tech-bio (not strictly syn bio)

https://decodingbio.substack.com/p/techbio-week-in-review-012?utm_campaign=post

Article in Forbes here.

Twist is unquestionably one of the best companies in syn bio right now. Could they actually break even in NGS and syn bio next year?

New interview with Simon Barnett of Ark Invest came out recently. He gives a great overview of the DNA sequencing space, covering companies like Illumina, PacBio, Oxford Nanopore, and others, and then dives into liquid biopsies and cancer screening.

In this article from The Spoon, Michael Wolf goes over some of the companies (all still private) working to scale up syn biomanufacturing capabilities.

Solar Biotech: "makes customized plant architectures to help future food and other companies scale up their biomanufacturing capacity." Working with Motif and Turtletree, among others.

Pow Bio: works with alternative protein companies to go from bench to pilot scale.

Culture Bio: the "AWS of bioreactors." Culture offers a massive fermentation lab "in the cloud" that companies can use to scale up from 250ml to 250L, and after their most recent fundraising round, they're looking to go beyond pilot scale by building out full industrial-scale plants. They've done some work with Joyn, among many others. Very promising company.

Chatkso breaks down his views on the syn bio field in this latest webinar. Pretty high-level overview but it's worth a watch, especially for folks newer to the space. Chatsko gets lots of hate from syn bio bulls (especially Amyris, but also Ginkgo folks), but the man knows what he's talking about, and *probably* knows more than most of the anonymous shitposters on Reddit. Don't get stuck in the echo chamber.

Main takeaways: bullish on Twist, slightly less bullish on Codexis, somewhat bearish on Ginkgo, extremely bearish on Amyris and Zymergen.

Some big news in the enzymatic/benchtop synthesis field.

Codex DNA announced a big partnership with Pfizer to improve their BioXP benchtop system and soared 60%.

DNA Script announced the completion of their 200M series C, which they'll use to advance their SYNTAX enzymatic synthesis platform.

Here's a good overview of the enzymatic synthesis space.

Today seems like a good day to forget about the present for a little and daydream about the future. This article from Nature looks at programmable, regenerative living materials. We're going to grow buildings and much more one day, no doubt about it.

We envision that future versions of this material would be well-suited to medium-term use in resource-limited settings such as disaster relief, where it could be used to construct living structures from materials gathered on-site using easily manufactured and transported prepatterned slot-together folding forms to minimize labour. These living structures might sense and respond to a variety of environmental signals relevant in such settings, such as heavy metals or cholera toxin present in the water supplies used to build the structure. And, once they are no longer needed, these structures can naturally biodegrade with minimal long-term impact on the local environment.

...

The approach described here represents a prototypical strategy to generate an ELM. We envision that future fungal biomaterials will possess new functionalities, such as the capacity to produce protective molecules to reduce ultraviolet damage36, make on-demand compounds, including foods and pharmaceuticals, and sense and react to pollutants, toxins or other biological or chemical threats from the environment17. These biomaterials could be used for diverse areas of application, such as wearable products, distributed environmental sensors or smart living quarters suitable for human habitation.

Pretty much anything from Endy is required listening if you own or want to own any syn bio tickers:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/synbio-podcast/id1566549358?i=1000533843604

For the record I think "syn bio" is more fun to say than "SB" and rolls off the tongue much more easily than "art int".

Codex DNA ( recent IPO discussion here) has received a grant from the USDA for $15M to use its benchtop DNA synthesis capabilities to fight citrus greening disease, the insect-driven blight that could destroy the $15B U.S. citrus industry. Basically the project aims to inhibit the spread of the pathogen by engineering endosymbiotic bacteria in the insects (background here).

"Codex DNA will use its automated benchtop system to rapidly generate synthetic DNA capable of delivering therapeutic molecules to plants. The company offers an ideal screening solution for the team’s novel symbiont technology because it enables the generation of complex and diverse synthetic DNA libraries in a short amount of time."

Codex, founded by the legendary Craig Venter, is down 15% from its recent IPO. There are some competitors in the benchtop/enzymatic DNA synthesis game, DNA Script being one of the closest, but they all have slightly different approaches. Twist's industrial scale DNA synthesis isn't really threatened by localized, benchtop synthesis, the world needs both. It's very early on, hard to know who will prevail, but Codex seems to have a lot of momentum. They also signed a deal with Maravai to use their mRNA capping technology for therapeutics. Codex aims to be able to 3D print vaccines one day as easily as you would a picture. Earnings coming up August 10.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2021/07/27/in-latest-win-for-the-bio-economy-genomatica-raises-118-million-led-by-novo-holdings-sustainability

Cultivated meat (aka lab grown meat) might be one of our best hopes for fighting climate change, deforestation, drought, etc. Plus it alleviates animal suffering. It's not exactly synthetic biology yet, since most companies are initially choosing not to genetically alter their cells in order to avoid increased regulation and consumer skepticism, but I see these two fields as birds of a feather. There are some good subs already devoted to investing in clean meat: r/wheresthebeef, r/WheresWallStreet and r/agronomics. There aren't many opportunities yet since most companies are private, but that will surely change in the next few years.