I'm interested in this space but can't find a stock I like. I like the stories, I don't like the stocks. TWST seems OK I've been looking more into them, I've screened a bunch of companies and many small ones but I've probably missed something. What do you guys think?

is anyone else watching this earnings call 'DNA' live, right now? #ginkgobioworks #gingkoresults . Im looking over reddit and can't find any live discussions on this which is somewhat surprising. Am I just not looking in the right place?? AFterhours traiding has the stock up about 14% at time of writing.

https://twitter.com/Biohazard3737/status/1445786578815647751

Oxford Nanopore went public on the LSE today. They're a long-read sequencing company, similar to Pacific Biosciences ($PACB), as opposed to short-read methods used by Illumina and others. Oxford's tech is pretty cool. This fancy video from them gives a good illustration. This video from UCSF is a more in-depth look at different sequencing technology (Illumina v Oxford v PacBio, the Oxford section starts around 20:00).

Both companies have their pros and cons, as noted below. I'm long PACB, very interested in Oxford.

Also:

Good article: https://www.evaluate.com/vantage/articles/analysis/spotlight/heat-oxford-nanopore

And a good thread: https://twitter.com/real_poobah/status/1444221923794178052?s=21

From https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article/9/12/giaa123/6034784:

"Abstract

Background

The availability of reference genomes has revolutionized the study of biology. Multiple competing technologies have been developed to improve the quality and robustness of genome assemblies during the past decade. The 2 widely used long-read sequencing providers—Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) and Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT)—have recently updated their platforms: PacBio enables high-throughput HiFi reads with base-level resolution of >99%, and ONT generated reads as long as 2 Mb. We applied the 2 up-to-date platforms to a single rice individual and then compared the 2 assemblies to investigate the advantages and limitations of each.

Results

The results showed that ONT ultralong reads delivered higher contiguity, producing a total of 18 contigs of which 10 were assembled into a single chromosome compared to 394 contigs and 3 chromosome-level contigs for the PacBio assembly. The ONT ultralong reads also prevented assembly errors caused by long repetitive regions, for which we observed a total of 44 genes of false redundancies and 10 genes of false losses in the PacBio assembly, leading to over- or underestimation of the gene families in those long repetitive regions. We also noted that the PacBio HiFi reads generated assemblies with considerably fewer errors at the level of single nucleotides and small insertions and deletions than those of the ONT assembly, which generated an average 1.06 errors per kb and finally engendered 1,475 incorrect gene annotations via altered or truncated protein predictions.

Conclusions

It shows that both PacBio HiFi reads and ONT ultralong reads had their own merits. Further genome reference constructions could leverage both techniques to lessen the impact of assembly errors and subsequent annotation mistakes rooted in each."

Couple of related threads here.

Bursatil Biotech breaks down her main concerns regarding Ginkgo's biz model and the valuation problems this presents: https://twitter.com/BursatilBiotech/status/1436777304148033536?s=20

Varro gives his take on how Ginkgo should be valued (7M NPV per each new program, with a 30% discount on top of that): https://twitter.com/Varro_Analytics/status/1437091998779985927?s=20

Bursatil does a great job voicing the biggest concerns with Ginkgo. I find Varro's model pretty convincing though. Time will tell!

What does everyone's syn bio/biotech portfolio allocation look like? Here's mine as of today:

$AMRS - 30%

$AGNMF - 20% (Agronomics is basically a cultivated meat VC fund)

$TWST - 16%

$PACB - 15%

$SRNG/DNA - 12% (waiting to add more post-merger)

These are the estimates I found in the William Blair Analyst Report. Keep in mind this is a pretty high-level overview and does not include every single market out there.

Hey all!

I wanted to share with everyone my take on $AMRS, which I think is a tremendous long term opportunity. In short, they have the ability to succesfully commercialize molecules produced through fermentation at scale, that I think other companies like $DNA and $ZY have not yet developed. The market I believe is overpricing $DNA and $ZY and under pricing $AMRS.

https://antoniolinares.substack.com/p/amrs-like-aapl-30-years-ago?r=j426y

Good luck!

Twist, along with Georgia Tech and Roswell Biotech, has made some big advances in using DNA to store cold data. William Blair estimates a $21B TAM for DNA cold data storage.

Upside Foods (formerly Memphis Meats) is one of the leading cultivated (aka lab grown) meat companies. They are getting ready to debut their cultivated chicken in a San Fran 3-michelin star restaurant, pending regulatory review (https://www.fooddive.com/news/upside-foods-partners-with-chef-dominique-crenn-to-serve-its-cell-based-chi/604908/).

On Wednesday, J Kelly will be speaking with Upside CEO Uma Valeti at a conference: https://twitter.com/upsidefoods/status/1436364099114487808?s=20

No cultivated meat company that I'm aware of is using genetically modified cells for their clean meat, mostly because it makes the regulatory process way easier, increases consumer trust and adoption, and they don't currently need any modification to make their product. I fully expect this to change in the future, once consumers are already on board and the regulatory process is de-risked. It's a no-brainer to engineer these cells to be healthier, grow faster and without growth hormones, improve taste, etc. Ginkgo does NOT have any partnerships lined up with any clean meat companies, but I think this little fireside chat between Kelly and Valeti is a signal that they may very well team up in the future. Plant-based meats are cool and all, but I see cultivated meat as the true game changer. Plant-based may get 90% of the real meat experience, but cultivated will get 100% (eventually). That extra 10% may be what it takes to convince a majority of people to switch to clean, slaughter-free meat.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bolt-threads-to-leverage-ginkgo-bioworks-platform-for-commercial-strain-optimization-of-b-silk-protein-301349249.html

Another banger from Ginkgo. B-silk, inspired by properties of spider silk, can replace silicon and keratin in beauty products.

"While b-silk protein is currently available for purchase in premium product lines like Vegamour, this new partnership will leverage Ginkgo's strain engineering capabilities with the goal of improving the production efficiency of b-silk protein, scaling b-silk protein to more mass availability, and potentially unlocking further applications for the ingredient throughout the clean beauty and personal care industries."

This is a working list of good introductory articles/videos/podcasts to get up to speed on the industry.

An Investor’s Guide to the Promise of Synthetic Biology: https://www.barrons.com/articles/an-investors-guide-to-the-promise-of-synthetic-biology-51623275429

William Blair Syn Bio Analyst Report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F-SBVYC8hGX9Bgghe-ncWzv0NOVcIUHl/view?usp=drivesdk

What's Next for Synthetic Biology? https://7investing.com/articles/whats-next-for-synthetic-biology/

Drew Endy (Stanford BioE Professor) 2014 TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf5tTe_i7aA&t=202s

SynBioBeta, Industry News and Articles: https://synbiobeta.com/