Redesigning Photosynthesis to Boost Agricultural Yield with Chris Eiben
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/Send us a text
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The Global Plastics Problem and Protein Engineering with Cesar Ramirez-Sarmiento
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. @cxarramirezSend us a text
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Engineering the P450 Workhorse to Secure Supply Chains and Save Endangered Trees with Maria Astolfi
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 Biotech00:19 Welcome to the Climate Biotech Podcast00:46 Meet Maria: From the Amazon to Biotech01:50 Maria's Early Inspirations and Career Path04:24 The Journey to Ginkgo Bioworks10:49 Challenges and Innovations in Biomanufacturing13:16 The Importance of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes16:38 Scaling Sustainable Biomanufacturing21:21 The Broader Impact of Biomanufacturing25:25 Future Visions and Final Thoughts33:33 Rapid Fire Questions and Closing RemarksSend us a text
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Solving for the P in NPK Fertilization Using Enzymes with Benjamin Scott
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/Send us a text
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What if Therapeutic-Grade Biotech Was Used for Environmental Remediation with Pranam Chatterjee
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.Send us a text
Are you fascinated by the power and potential of biotechnology? Do you want to learn about cutting-edge innovations that can address climate change? The Climate Biotech Podcast explores the most pressing problems at the intersection of climate and biology, and most importantly, how to solve them. Hosted by Dan Goodwin, a neuroscientist turned biotech enthusiast, the podcast features interviews with leading experts diving deep into topics like plant synthetic biology, mitochondrial engineering, gene editing, and more. This podcast is powered by Homeworld Collective, a non-profit whose mission is to ignite the field of climate biotechnology.
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