The Climate Biotech Podcast

On this episode of The Climate Biotech Podcast, Paul Reginato is joined by Evan Groover, a plant synthetic biologist and postdoctoral fellow in Mary Gehring's lab at the Whitehead Institute at MIT. His work spans CRISPR tool development, engineering photosynthesis, plant epigenetics, and making plant genome editing accessible beyond the well-funded incumbents that have historically dominated the field.

Evan grew up in Northern California in what he calls the epicenter of the non-GMO movement, and studied music seriously before finding his way to plant biology. He came into the field just as regulators began distinguishing gene-edited plants from transgenic ones, a shift that opened modern editing tools to a much wider set of crops and researchers. During his PhD at UC Berkeley at the Innovative Genomics Institute, Evan built a screening system in sorghum protoplasts capable of testing roughly 30,000 CRISPR edits at once, targeting the promoters of three photosynthesis genes to find the smallest possible edits that could increase their expression – a process that would take months or years and many acres of land to perform in the field.

One of Evan's core points is that flowering plants – which account for nearly all crops – share most of their genes, and much of what distinguishes one species or variety from another sits in the regulatory DNA sequences that control when and where those genes are expressed. That has implications for how we improve crops. Traditional breeding selects variation that already exists in crops, but genome editing can introduce small but novel changes in regulatory sequences that access phenotypic space that no living plant currently occupies. In his current postdoc, Evan is extending this thinking into epigenetics, asking how much crop performance is shaped by chemical modifications to DNA that exist outside of the sequence itself.

Listen to learn how genome editing can be a powerful tool for agriculture with regulatory acceptance, and why improving photosynthesis is a promising lever for sustainable agriculture and potentially carbon removal.

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On this episode of The Climate Biotech Podcast, Paul Reginato is joined by Robbie Wilson, a research scientist in the Department of Chemistry at MIT, where he leads the RuBisCO engineering effort in Matt Shoulders' lab. Robbie has spent his career working on RuBisCO – the enzyme that fixes CO2 –across labs in Australia, Germany, and the United States. He co-leads the Enhanced Photosynthesis in Crops (EPiC) Project, which applies directed evolution to RuBisCO with the goal of moving improved variants from the lab into field-relevant crops.

RuBisCO is present in all autotrophic organisms, including plants, where it catalyzes the conversion of CO2 into molecules that can be used throughout metabolism. Almost every carbon atom in your body passed through it at some point. It is also famously slow, and the version inside plants is so structurally fragile it needs a dedicated team of helper proteins just to fold correctly. During his postdoc in Germany, Robbie and a colleague figured out exactly which helpers were needed, making it possible for the first time to grow and engineer plant RuBisCO inside ordinary lab bacteria. That unlocked the door to testing thousands of variants quickly.

Robbie's work also points to why a faster RuBisCO is not necessarily a better one. The fastest versions found in nature live in places like hydrothermal vents where CO2 is abundant, and they perform poorly inside a leaf where CO2 is scarce. The more useful questions are about CO2 affinity, the trade-off between activity and stability that keeps the enzyme from being pushed too far, and oxygen interference. Oxygen interference is when RuBisCO mistakenly catalyzes a reaction with oxygen instead of CO2, an inefficiency which wastes the plant's energy and gets worse as temperatures climb. Reducing that oxygen sensitivity is a central focus of MIT’s EPiC Project, and is a high-leverage opportunity to protect crop yields in a warming world.

Listen to learn why heat waves are increasingly dangerous for staple crops like wheat, how machine learning is reshaping the way RuBisCO engineers choose which mutations to test, and what stands between today's lab results and a real improvement in the field.

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On this episode of The Climate Biotech Podcast, we are joined by Henry Lee, CEO of Cultivarium, a Focused Research Organization (FRO) that accelerates the engineering of non-model organisms.

Henry came to biotechnology through electrical engineering, after a chance opportunity to dissect crayfish neurons inspired a passion for using engineering to understand biology while using biology to engineer. During his postdoc in George Church's lab, he pursued what he calls "bucket list science." For one of his projects, he developed new methods to culture and engineer the bacterium Vibrio natriegens, which is one of the fastest-growing organisms ever described and grows roughly twice as quickly as E. coli. That work shaped Cultivarium's approach to the broader problem of non-model organisms.

Henry believes that the mental model of applied biology has traditionally been far too one-to-one, focusing on a single organism for a single application: “If you’re interested in plastic degradation, well have you heard of this one microbe that does plastic degradation?” In reality, most useful capabilities are shared amongst many organisms, and we would ideally draw on that full diversity to develop solutions. Cultivarium is developing tools to make it easier to work with diverse organisms to find what works best for a particular goal.

Listen to learn how Cultivarium is changing the way researchers approach engineering non-model organisms.

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On this episode of The Climate Biotech Podcast, Paul Reginato is joined by Kiara Reyes Gamas, environmental synthetic biologist and non-resident postdoctoral scholar at Rice University's Baker Institute. Alongside her bench science, she has consistently engaged with the social and governance dimensions of synthetic biology, which shapes how she thinks about engineering microbes for environmental release.

Much of Kiara’s work has focused on horizontal gene transfer, the process by which microbes naturally swap DNA throughout the environment. It is how antibiotic resistance spreads, and it is one of the central reasons regulators worry about releasing engineered microbes. The problem is that we have very poor measurements of how often it actually happens in natural settings in complex communities, or which organisms participate.

Kiara’s research also suggests that the field's default toward biocontainment may be missing the point for environmental applications. A microbe engineered to clean up an oil spill has to interact with the environment to do its job. The more useful questions are about which genes are safe to introduce, how engineered organisms behave under selective pressure in microbial communties, how to integrate human communities into the governance of these technologies, and whether the regulatory scrutiny applied to recombinant DNA should extend to any non-native microbe being released.

Listen to learn how RNA-based barcoding extends the reach of horizontal gene transfer measurements across microbial species, what ecology has to teach synthetic biologists about environmental release, and why Kiara argues that community co-design is an engineering requirement rather than a regulatory checkbox.

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On this episode of The Climate Biotech Podcast, Paul is joined by Eli Hornstein, founder and CEO of Elysia Bio, a company engineering feed crops to address methane emissions from livestock. Eli came to plant biotech through an unlikely path: undergraduate degrees in ecology and linguistics, conservation fieldwork across East Africa and South America, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Mongolia before a PhD in plant genetic engineering at NC State. That ecological background shapes how Eli thinks about intervention points in agriculture.

One of Eli’s core insights is that plant biotech has spent decades optimizing plants for the plant's sake while largely ignoring that those plants are actually for feeding animals. Enteric methane from ruminants is the single largest source of methane on Earth – larger than oil and gas – and most of those animals are on pasture with few practical options for emissions reduction.

Elysia's first trait encodes bromoform, a methane-inhibiting compound from red seaweed, directly into corn so farmers don't need to change feeding practices. The company has since expanded into pasture grasses and other crops to reach ruminants outside commodity feed systems. Their most ambitious project, the PlaMMO Project, engineers plants to express methane monooxygenase (MMO), the enzyme methanotrophs use to oxidize methane, potentially enabling crops to pull methane directly from the atmosphere. Elysia is currently running analytical chemistry on their first MMO-expressing plant candidates.

Listen to learn about the community of researchers working to de-risk heterologous MMO expression, why plant synthetic biology is underrated relative to microbial systems, and why Eli thinks ecological thinking is one of the most undervalued skills in biotech. Plus, learn how a photosynthesizing sea slug inspired a company name.

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In Dan Goodwin’s final episode as host, The Climate Biotech Podcast reflects on over 30 episodes of conversations with scientists, entrepreneurs, and builders at the frontier of climate biotechnology, and marks the official handover of the podcast to Homeworld Collective's new Executive Director and co-founder, Paul Reginato.

Dan and Paul trace their partnership back to MIT, where they were both developing first-of-kind spatial genomics technologies in Ed Boyden and George Church's labs. What started as a shared drive to work on climate change grew into organic community building, and eventually into Homeworld Collective, an organization designed to connect climate biotech practitioners with high-leverage problems, collaborators, and funding.

The episode distills wisdom from the podcast's guests so far. When asked what shaped them as thinkers, guests overwhelmingly cited science fiction and art over technical papers. On mentor advice, the theme was self-advocacy: pick hard problems, learn to communicate your work, and trust your own intuition. And when asked where a magic wand of climate biotech should point, answers ranged from better field measurements for methane to the largely untapped interface between geology and biology.

At the end of the episode, Paul shares his vision for Homeworld's phase two: refinement and scaling of Homeworld’s methods through more community convenings, a new ambassador program, faster production of problem statements, and more focused grantmaking designed to nucleate productive research communities in underserved, high-impact problem spaces. Dan reflects on his framework for choosing what comes next and highlights the underappreciated connection between environmental pollutants and the 70-80% of human disease that remains sporadic and unexplained.

Listen for the best career advice for early-career scientists, like "nail your projects, don't pick your track,” what a tadpole losing its tail teaches us about growth, and why building friendships across disciplinary boundaries can unlock your own potential to impact some of the most important problems of our time.

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On the most recent episode of the Climate Biotech Podcast, we are joined by Ginger Krieg Dosier, an architect-turned-biotech entrepreneur who created biocement at Biomason and is now building BIOME Consortia to accelerate biology's transition from thousands to billions of applications. Ginger's journey from NASA kid in Alabama to founding one of climate biotech's earliest companies reveals how architectural thinking translates surprisingly well to biological innovation.

Ginger’s approach at Biomasontackled concrete, the second most consumed substance on Earth after water. By using microbes to precipitate calcium carbonate at ambient temperature instead of firing kilns at 1500°C, they cut both emissions and energy usage dramatically.

The pivot to BIOME emerged from a startling statistic: with an estimated one trillion microbial species on Earth and only 0.001% discovered, Ginger saw that the strain bank they'd built for biocement applications represented something far bigger. Today, fewer than 800 strains power all commercial applications - she believes we need billions by 2050.

BIOME’s two flagship initiatives address this gap. Atlas creates a digital microbial commons focused on access and interpretability, gamifying discovery and translation to engage more tinkerers. Arc tackles preservation, particularly of threatened environments like glaciers that lose tens of quadrillions of microbes to sea annually, while moving beyond minus-80 storage limitations.

Listen to learn why consortia-based biology may solve the scaling economics that sank many biomanufacturing companies, how visualization of the invisible microbiome could transform public engagement, and why the "age of complexity" might finally deliver on the 1999 prediction that the 21st century would be biology's era.

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In this special episode, we sit down with Shuguang Zhang, Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Architecture in the MIT Media Lab and a mentor to countless biotech explorers. His personal story has at least one literal "1 in 100 Million" moment and demonstrates the power of curiosity, kindness, and always asking questions.

We trace how Shuguang's stubbornness to pursue questions long after others give up has taken him around the world and reshaped biology. "Why is some DNA left-handed?" is a question he couldn't stop asking as a young man in China. It led him to work with one of his heroes, Alexander Rich at MIT, where he discovered zoutin (from the Chinese word for left, 左, zuo), the critical protein for mysterious Z-DNA. When he purified this new protein, he became fascinated by how it self-assembled into structures visible to the naked eye—a discovery that became PuraMatrix, now used in wound healing worldwide, and sparked generations of curiosity about self-assembling peptides.

Similarly, wondering why there are both hydrophobic and hydrophilic alpha helices led to the QTY code: a beautifully simple method to convert any membrane protein into a water-soluble form. By swapping hydrophobic residues for polar look-alikes (Q, T, and Y) without breaking geometry, this unlocks dense high-signal sensors, "molecular trap" therapeutics targeting cancer metastasis, and a fresh way to treat receptors as modular parts rather than fragile mysteries.

The pattern repeats with S-layer proteins: nature's two-dimensional crystalline lattices that orient engineered receptors 100% upright at nanometer precision. Combined with QTY-solubilized proteins, these create clean bioelectronic interfaces, ultrasensitive arrays, and new possibilities for separations and chemical monitoring.

We widen the lens to climate: industrial-scale kelp systems for carbon capture and feed, biotech routes for ocean-based materials, and practical paths to planetary solutions that borrow from biology's atomic precision and self-assembly. Kelp's exceptional photosynthetic efficiency and rapid growth make it a promising system that biotechnology could enhance through genetic engineering.

Threaded through it all are lessons from mentors like Francis Crick ("ask big questions, you get bigger answers") and Alexander Rich ("it's equally important to know what not to do"). As Shuguang puts it: "In doing science, we see a lot of things, but don't observe. To observe is to pay attention." We also talk frankly about funding setbacks, debt, persistence, and the role of AI: powerful at pattern completion, weak at original curiosity.

If you care about proteins, materials, sensors, climate biotech, or simply how a life of questioning can bend reality, this conversation is a field guide.

If the story resonates, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review with the one question this episode inspired you to ask next.

Read Shuguang's powerful essay "Life Has Ups and Downs, but Always Ask Questions": https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363521718_Life_Has_Ups_and_Downs_but_Always_Ask_Questions

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Biomanufacturing doesn’t fail for lack of clever biology; it stalls at the factory gate. We sit down with Biosphere CEO Brian Heligman to unpack how a materials scientist’s journey through batteries and perovskites led to a bold thesis for the bioeconomy: change the constraints of the bioreactor and you change everything downstream. Instead of miles of steam lines and fragile commissioning, Biosphere is betting on UV-sterilized stainless systems, modern automation, and a full-stack approach that removes cost, complexity, and fear of contamination at scale.

Brian shares the hard lessons that shaped this strategy. In batteries, volumetric energy density mattered more than academic fashion. In solar, perovskite hype obscured the real blocker—stability. Translate that to biotech and the pattern holds: milligram wins and elegant papers won’t survive a plant with 50% contamination rates and $200 million capex. We walk through why legacy steam sterilization persists, how biopharma escaped into single-use plastics, and why industrial biotech needs a third path that’s cleaner, cheaper, and durable enough for daily production.

We also get tactical. What does it take to prove sterility “100 out of 100” times? How do you stress-test reactors with spore challenges, long sterile holds, and instrumentation that actually supports root-cause analysis? Why start with ag biologics (eg biostimulants and biopesticides) where customers feel the manufacturing bottleneck most acutely? And how can a 20,000-liter demonstration line bridge the gap between pilot and revenue, unlocking offtake and real unit economics without betting the company on a greenfield?

There’s a policy and resilience angle too. With defense and industrial strategy shifting toward domestic capability in vitamins, antibiotics, and specialty inputs, better reactors are not just a cost play, they’re a strategic asset. Over time, once performance is undeniable, even conservative markets like biopharma may follow. Until then, the opportunity is clear: lower the hurdle rate, reduce plastic waste, simplify scale-up, and let product companies focus on what customers actually want.

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Pollution isn’t an abstract headline; it’s inside our bodies today. We sit down with Dr. Jenna Hua to reveal how small, everyday choices expose us to hormone-disrupting chemicals. Jenna explains why single-chemical research fails in a world of mixed exposures and shows how metabolomics turns invisible toxins into clear, personal insights you can act on now.

We trace Jenna’s path from nutrition research and a Fulbright in China to a painful fertility journey that exposed the limits of clinical testing. That lived experience powered a new model: targeted urine testing for bisphenols, phthalates, parabens, oxybenzone, and other chemicals, paired with education that helps you ditch high-exposure products and rethink packaging, takeout, and personal care. We also go behind the scenes on what it takes to make real-world science work: building shippable kits, solving messy logistics, and funding rigorous studies through SBIR grants when traditional investors wanted a simpler story.

Then we look forward. With the Healthy Nevada Project, Jenna’s team is connecting exposure profiles to genetics to understand who detoxes quickly, who bioactivates toxic intermediates, and how reducing exposure can change clinical outcomes in fertility, weight, and metabolic health. We break down targeted vs untargeted metabolomics, and why automation, AI, and product testing are the next frontier for honest labeling and safer supply chains. If you’ve wondered whether phthalate-free really means what it says, or how to make weight-loss therapy more effective by lowering obesogens, this conversation delivers science, strategy, and a roadmap you can use.

If this resonated, share it with a friend, subscribe for more climate biotech deep dives, and leave a review to help others discover the show. Your support helps bring rigorous, human-centered science to the problems that affect us all.

To learn more, check out:
Website: http://www.millionmarker.com (main company site)

Million Marker Research Institute: millionmarker.org (nonprofit side with white papers on product testing)

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Professor Pam Silver from Harvard Medical School joins us as a founding figure and legend in synthetic biology whose scientific path led from pioneering work on nuclear localization to co-developing the revolutionary "bionic leaf"—a system that combines artificial catalysts with bacteria to convert sunlight and CO2 into fuels and compounds at efficiencies far exceeding natural photosynthesis.

Silver's perspective on synthetic biology's evolution from theoretical explorations to real-world applications is illuminating. "The only way we're going to solve the problems of the world with food and impending climate change is through engineering biology," she asserts. "Nature has solved many problems already, and the more we learn how nature solves them, we can implement that."

She doesn't shy away from controversial topics, proudly declaring herself "a full-on GMO believer" while acknowledging the ethical complexities of engineered deployments. Her approach exemplifies the powerful interface between human engineering and biological processes that characterizes her climate solutions work.

For aspiring biotechnologists, Silver offers wisdom distilled from decades at the forefront: "Be bold, take risks, but remain humble and respect nature." This balance of audacity and reverence captures her approach to reimagining biology as an engineering medium—one that might hold solutions to our most pressing planetary challenges.

Whether you're a scientist, entrepreneur, or simply curious about how biology might shape our climate future, this episode offers insights from someone who has helped define synthetic biology from its earliest days.

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Sonja Salmon takes us on a fascinating journey through her 20-year quest to harness the power of enzymes and textiles to fight climate change. Her background in textile chemistry led to a deep understanding of natural polymers like cellulose and chitosan, which eventually connected to her fascination with enzymes during a 22-year career at the world's largest industrial enzyme company.

The heart of Salmon's innovation lies in immobilizing carbonic anhydrase. This remarkably fast enzyme converts carbon dioxide to bicarbonate, in this case onto textile surfaces. By coating cotton with chitosan and using reactive dye chemistry as a cross-linking agent, she creates a durable attachment that maintains the enzyme's activity while providing an ideal gas-liquid contact surface. This ingenious approach transforms ordinary fabric into a carbon capture device with minimal energy requirements.

What makes this approach so promising is its accessibility and scalability. The global textile manufacturing infrastructure already exists, and the materials involved are largely bio-derived and familiar to the industry.

Beyond carbon capture, Salmon's collaborative work extends to nitrogenase, an enzyme that could potentially replace the carbon-intensive Haber-Bosch process responsible for 2% of global CO2 emissions. Her vision of conductive textiles delivering electrons to immobilized nitrogenase points to a future where our clothes might literally help save the planet.

Join us to discover how this innovative scientist is weaving together biology and fabric into powerful climate solutions, and why she believes so strongly that we can—and must—take action on climate change. Check out Textile Biocatalysis Research online or biocatncsuedu to learn more about Professor Salmon's groundbreaking work.

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When Loren Looger walks into a room, he doesn't want recognition, he wants to make things that work. The creator of revolutionary, open-source tools that transformed how we visualize brain activity is increasingly turning his protein engineering expertise to formidable challenges in climate, including methane degradation. .

Methane sits at the heart of our climate crisis as a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Yet nature has evolved only a few enzyme scapable of breaking it down. Methane monooxygenase (MMO) is on eof these remarkable proteins existing in methanotrophs, specialized microbes that have evolved unique cellular structures specifically to process methane. Despite its discovery decades ago, MMO remains stubbornly mysterious, with scientists still uncertain about its basic biochemical requirements.

In this fascinating conversation, Looger describes how he's applying the same methodical approach that revolutionized neuroscience to this critical climate challenge. His project aims to create fluorescent biosensors that can reveal MMO's secrets—how it interacts with membranes, what metals it requires, and why it struggles to function when expressed in other organisms. The ultimate vision? Engineering plants that can express functional MMO, potentially transforming forests into methane-capturing systems.

What makes this story particularly compelling is Looger's journey—from a math-obsessed kid in Alabama who worked at NASA after school, to a biochemist who stumbled into neuroscience, to a climate biotechnologist driven by urgency. "We've got one last chance to save a planet where we can study neuroscience," he notes, explaining his pivot to climate work.

Throughout his career, Looger has championed a culture of scientific openness, freely sharing tools before publication—a philosophy he believes is essential for climate innovation. His approach reminds us that sometimes the most meaningful scientific contributions come not from flashy breakthroughs but from methodical improvements that make complex systems accessible to all researchers.

Ready to bring your expertise to climate challenges? Email Lauren directly—he welcomes collaborations from scientists willing to apply their skills to our planet's most pressing problems.

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What happens when a structural biochemist turns his attention to mountains of rock? Dr. Sasha Milshteyn takes us on a remarkable journey from studying tiny molecular movements in proteins to revolutionizing how we extract copper from massive mine heaps.

The mining industry faces a critical challenge - we've depleted most easily-processed oxide copper ores, leaving behind harder-to-extract sulfides that typically yield just 30-50% recovery using conventional methods. This creates a significant bottleneck for the clean energy transition, which demands unprecedented quantities of copper. For decades, miners have attempted to improve extraction by growing iron and sulfur oxidizing microbes in labs and inoculating heaps with them, but these introduced microbes rarely thrive against established native communities.

Sasha's breakthrough insight came from recognizing that every ore heap already contains a complex ecosystem of extremophiles - acid-loving microbes that derive energy from "eating rock." Rather than fighting against these established communities by introducing foreign organisms, Transition Biomining analyzes the native microbiome and identifies what's limiting its performance. They then develop custom "prebiotics" that enhance the function of these specialized microbes, potentially boosting recovery by 25-30 percentage points.

What makes this approach particularly powerful is how it integrates with existing mining infrastructure. A medium-sized mine moves approximately 100,000 tons of rock daily - the equivalent of 1,000 train cars. By working within established processes rather than requiring entirely new systems, Transition offers a practical path forward for an industry traditionally, and understandably, resistant to change.

Beyond mining, Sasha shares valuable insights for all scientists and entrepreneurs: understand what happens at scale before designing bench experiments, question assumptions in established protocols, and recognize how little we truly know about biological systems.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amilshteyn/

Website: transition.bio

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Mining has essentially been the same for 5,000 years, just now with bigger shovels. Imagine if we could drastically increase mining efficiency and output for both the environment and national security. That's exactly what Dr. Esteban Gazel, a Costa Rican-born geochemist, and Dr. Buz Barstow, a physicist-turned-synthetic biologist, are working on at Cornell University.

When these brilliant minds connected over rare earth elements and carbon storage, they realized that existing microorganisms could be engineered and optimized to transform how we extract critical minerals from the earth. Their groundbreaking research has already improved the microbe Gluconobacter's ability to extract rare earth elements by an astounding 1,200% compared to its natural capabilities. This biological approach operates at room temperature with minimal environmental impact, potentially transforming mining from a destructive industry into a sustainable process.

The stakes couldn't be higher. Each wind turbine requires five tons of copper and one ton of rare earth elements, materials that currently demand processing hundreds or thousands of tons of rock through energy-intensive methods. As we transition to clean energy, these demands will only increase, creating an urgent need for sustainable extraction approaches.

Their Microbe Mineral Atlas project aims to catalog how microorganisms interact with minerals, identifying biological systems that can dissolve rocks, generate acids, create chelators, and precipitate specific elements. Beyond metal extraction, they're exploring how microbes might accelerate natural carbon sequestration processes in minerals like olivine.

What makes their work so powerful is their complementary expertise – Gozel's deep knowledge of mineral thermodynamics paired with Barstow's synthetic biology innovations. Their vision goes beyond incremental improvements; they're reimagining mining entirely with processes that can efficiently extract multiple elements simultaneously, utilize low-grade deposits, and operate with minimal environmental impact.

Join us for this fascinating conversation about how the tiniest organisms on Earth might help solve some of our biggest resource challenges. Subscribe to the Climate Biotech Podcast to explore more groundbreaking solutions at the intersection of climate and biology.

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What if we could reinvent photosynthesis itself? GigaCrop founder and CEO Chris Eiben has a mission to dramatically increase crop yields by redesigning one of biology's most fundamental processes.

With half of Earth's habitable land already dedicated to agriculture and growing demands for food, fiber, and materials, we face a critical choice: convert more natural landscapes to farmland or make existing farmland drastically more productive.

The problem lies with Rubisco, the enzyme at the heart of photosynthesis. Despite millions of years of evolution, Rubisco remains frustratingly inefficient - it's slow and frequently mistakes oxygen for carbon dioxide, forcing plants to waste energy correcting these errors. Rather than trying to improve Rubisco itself (a challenge that has consumed billions in research funding), GigaCrop is building entirely new biochemical pathways using faster enzymes that don't make these mistakes.

The potential impact is staggering. In full sunlight, plants receive more photons than they can use - the biochemical process of carbon conversion becomes the bottleneck. By addressing this fundamental limitation, GigaCrop could enable crops to produce significantly more yield on the same land, transforming agriculture while preserving natural ecosystems.

Connect with Chris if you're excited about plant engineering or bringing game-changing technologies to market.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-eiben/

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The solution to plastic waste looks different depending on where you stand in the world. While Northern Hemisphere biotech approaches to plastic recycling focus on high-temperature enzymes designed to regenerate plastic monomers (which works when you produce lots of plastic), Cesar's lab has engineered a completely different solution. Starting with microorganisms from Antarctica, his team uses AI and deep learning to design enzymes that work efficiently at low temperatures - not to recycle plastic into more plastic, but to transform it into valuable fragrances and other products that actually have market demand in Latin America.

The conversation weaves between technical enzyme design challenges and broader themes of democratizing biotechnology across the Global South. During the COVID pandemic, when reagent shortages hit Latin America particularly hard, Cesar co-founded initiatives to produce essential molecular biology enzymes locally. This experience crystallized his vision of combining open science with practical innovation - making biotechnology tools accessible while simultaneously developing commercial applications.

Follow Cesar's work at the Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering ath the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

@cxarramirez

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What if we could secure critical supply chains through bioengineering? What if the vaccines protecting millions worldwide didn't require harvesting 10,000 trees annually from Chilean mountains? Maria Astolfi is tackling this exact challenge through groundbreaking work with P450 enzymes.

Growing up surrounded by biodiversity shaped Maria's unique perspective on biotechnology. After co-founding the Amazon's first synthetic biology lab and working at Ginkgo Bioworks, she now conducts research in UC Berkeley's Jay Keasling laboratory. Her mission? Solving one of biomanufacturing's most persistent bottlenecks – engineering the notoriously difficult P450 enzymes that are crucial for producing complex natural products.

The stakes couldn't be higher. QS-21, a critical vaccine adjuvant, costs up to $200,000 per gram due to its complex extraction from Chilean trees. Beyond the environmental damage, this extractive approach creates volatile supply chains for essential medicines. Maria's innovative combination of machine learning and high-throughput robotics has already yielded a remarkable 3x improvement in enzyme activity – just the beginning of what's possible.

What makes Maria's vision truly transformative is how it reconnects biotechnology with biodiversity. By focusing first on this high-value target, she's creating infrastructure that could eventually transform production of countless natural products.

Listen to this episode for a glimpse into a future where advanced biotechnology and biodiversity protection go hand in hand.

00:00 Introduction to Vaccine Adjuvants and Climate Biotech
00:19 Welcome to the Climate Biotech Podcast
00:46 Meet Maria: From the Amazon to Biotech
01:50 Maria's Early Inspirations and Career Path
04:24 The Journey to Ginkgo Bioworks
10:49 Challenges and Innovations in Biomanufacturing
13:16 The Importance of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes
16:38 Scaling Sustainable Biomanufacturing
21:21 The Broader Impact of Biomanufacturing
25:25 Future Visions and Final Thoughts
33:33 Rapid Fire Questions and Closing Remarks

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The global food system has a phosphorus problem that few people talk about. Unlike nitrogen, which cycles naturally through our atmosphere, phosphorus is mined from finite deposits and has no natural cycle. A massive 100-kilometer conveyor belt—visible from space—transports phosphate-rich rock from the Sahara Desert to ships waiting to distribute this critical resource worldwide. Any disruption to this supply chain would threaten global agriculture, yet when phosphorus runs off fields, it creates devastating algal blooms in lakes and rivers.

Ben Scott, Engineering Biology Platform Lead at the Global Institute for Food Security, is developing an elegant solution using protein engineering. His team is redesigning enzymes called phytases to unlock organic phosphorus already present in soil but unavailable to plants. Up to 80% of organic phosphorus exists as phytate molecules bound to metal ions, making them inaccessible. While natural phytases can break these bonds, they've evolved to work in acidic, warm environments—not the neutral, cooler conditions of agricultural soils.

Scott is combining protein engineering with automation and AI to create enzymes specifically tailored for field applications. His team uses high-throughput robotics to test thousands of enzyme variants across different conditions, generating quality data that feeds AI models to design better proteins. Through this, accomplishing twin goals — reducing our dependence on mined phosphate while preventing the environmental damage caused by phosphorus runoff — could be within reach.

The work exemplifies how synthetic biology can address climate and food security challenges through creative biological design. By moving beyond the limitations of natural enzymes to create proteins specifically tailored to agricultural needs, Scott's research points toward a more sustainable future for phosphorus management in global agriculture.

Ben Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminmscott/

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Imagine proteins engineered to seek out and bind toxic heavy metals, cleaning up contaminated sites and potentially treating metal poisoning in humans.

In this episode, Duke University professor and entrepreneur Pranam Chatterjee shares how his has developed two impressive AI tools transforming this field: MetaLATTE, which predicts whether proteins will bind specific metals, and the upcoming MetaLORIAN, which generates custom peptides designed to target particular metals like cadmium, lead, or copper. These technologies represent a significant advancement over traditional remediation approaches, potentially offering more precise, selective methods for environmental cleanup.

What makes this work particularly exciting is its dual potential—the same protein engineering techniques could address environmental pollution while simultaneously developing therapies for human metal poisoning. From brownfield remediation to industrial metal recycling and medical applications, these programmable proteins could offer unprecedented flexibility in how we tackle toxic metal contamination.

Visit chatterjeelab.com or huggingface.com/chatterjeelab to explore these tools yourself and see firsthand how AI-driven protein engineering is revolutionizing environmental remediation.

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