How Ginkgo Bioworks leverages synthetic biology to shape future of food

[Patrick Boyle] is currently the Head of Codebase at Ginkgo Bioworks, a Boston-based synthetic biology company that makes and sells engineered organisms. Ginkgo’s Codebase includes thousands of novel strains, enzymes, genetic parts, and diverse genetic repositories, including millions of engineered DNA sequences. The bioengineering and synthetic biology tech helps food brands come up with animal-free proteins.

The company is working with food brands like EVO by creating animal-free eggs through precision fermentation and Phytolon with natural colors.

BOYLE: Ginkgo’s mission is to make biology easier to engineer. I’ve been in the bioengineering space for about 20 years now and I think we’re still very far away from “easy.” Certainly the investment in software and automation that we’ve made here at Ginkgo—like advances in machine learning and AI—are making things easier, but I think you’d have a hard time saying that biology is super predictable and easy to engineer yet.

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FOOD DIVE: What do you think will be the biggest change in the industry in 10 years?

BOYLE: I think the notion of making proteins and enzymes for the food space, hopefully should be routine. Enzymes in particular have been used in food production for decades, but being able to engineer and fine tune those capabilities and develop a totally novel enzyme for the space like we’re doing for a number of our partners—that’s still relatively new. Hopefully that will be seen as routine in 10 years.

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