Rewriting the book on biology
Founder of innovation network shares how its efforts are solving problems including COVID-19 and hangovers
John Cumbers is founder and CEO of Synbiobeta, a global network of biological engineers and entrepreneurs in a promising new scientific field known as “synthetic biology.” The San Francisco Bay Area is a leader in this little-known but fast-growing industry, which reassembles the building blocks of life in imaginative and diverse ways. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q
Biology feels as natural as ladybugs, daisies and bunny rabbits. What makes it “synthetic”?
A
Every nucleotide — every A, C, T and G — in every single one of your cells is synthesized. You were synthesized. Your DNA from your mom and dad is synthesized into 100 trillion cells — that’s 100 trillion copies of your DNA — that makes you you. So, in that respect, “synthetic” is natural.
However, the name “synthetic biology” has come to mean a new set of technologies around reading, writing and editing of DNA — and designing, building and testing of biological cells to perform particular functions.
I describe “synthetic biology” as a movement to make biology easier to engineer.
Q
What does it do?
A
We’re creating some cool innovations and applications, from food to fuel, drugs, materials, chemicals and consumer products.
For instance, Berkeley Lights is an Emeryvillebased company that has built a piece of hardware to help discover potential drug-quality antibodies against the COVID-19 virus.
For example, it allows you to take a sample of blood from a Covid-19-recovered patient, separate out the immune cells and put them into different “pens” on a machine — they’re called “nanopens” — with optical tweezers. … You incubate them and havethemmakeantibodies.
And then take those antibodies and test whether they are “neutralizing” — that is, whether they kill, or neutralize, the coronavirus. If so, you can go back to the exact cell that made the right antibody that killed the virus. Then you can sequence the DNA of that immune cell. And find the antibody gene that neutralizes the virus.
You could send that sequence of DNA code to Twist Bioscience, based in San Francisco, and they’ll build and send you back the actual DNA. You can put that DNA into another cell that’s used specifically for making lots of antibodies.
Now you can brew those ANTI-COVID-19 antibodies in a fermenter. Just like you might brew beer or wine.
Q
Are there other interesting projects?
A
One is a San Francisco company called Zbiotics, which makes a probiotic hangover cure. They’ve changed a bacteria that lives in the gut so it expresses an enzyme which breaks down aldehyde, a byproduct of alcohol metabolism. Aldehyde causes your blood vessels to swell and get inflamed. That’s what gives you a hangover.
Another really cool application comes from the company Checkerspot, based in Berkeley. They’ve created a gene “expression system” for producing oil from algae. They’ve launched their own ski brand — the skis are built of flexible foam made from the oils in algae.
They can go out into nature and, using DNA sequencing, find all of these esoteric oils out there. For instance, maybe my Japanese maple has an interesting oil but you never smell it or see because it’s just at such a small level. You could find the oil, put it into their platform and scale it up to an industrially relevant amount.
Q
Besides skis and hangover cures, are there other compelling problems it can help solve? A The climate crisis. Every time we suck up oil from the ground, put it into a car and drive a mile, we are putting carbon out into the air. It’s causing havoc.
Biology loves carbon. It sucks it out of the air; it eats it. And it converts it into skis, or hangover cures, or antibodies, or DNA. All of the stuff that I’ve mentioned is made of carbon.
It’s carbon biomanufacturing. Q How do you respond to people who say “Don’t mess with Mother Nature!” A Mother Nature is messing with us. She’s a cruel mistress. Right now, there’s coronavirus. And SARS, Ebola, lightning, floods, locusts, poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders … all of these horrible things are products of Mother Nature. We don’t want to fall for the “naturalistic fallacy.” Just because something is “natural” doesn’t mean it’s good. Q Are there things we shouldn’t do with biology? Are there lines we shouldn’t cross?
A
I’m sure there are. I tend not to think about them. Oh, here’s one: Biological warfare. We should never go there.
Q
What was the inspiration behind the creation of Synbiobeta?
A
I describe Synbiobeta as a synthetic biology startup self-help group. I founded it in 2012 as a way to bring together my friends in the startup and investor worlds to share best practices, meet each other and talk about what the future of biology looks like. Our first meeting had 150 people show up. Initially, I ran Synbiobeta out of my bedroom; now we’re 11 people. There are over 50,000 people in our global network. About 12,000 to 13,000 people attended at the last conference.
I’m a dyslexic extrovert who is now a professional networker. I love to meet people but I hate to read.
So I need to surround myself with smart experts and make good friends with them — so that when I need to know something, they’ll pick up the phone and enjoy answering my stupid questions.
I never had a plan for Synbiobeta. I still don’t really know what it is. On my desk today, I’ve written this new life plan. It says: “Family first.” And: “Settle the moon.” There’s no Synbiobeta on there.
Synbiobeta is my fantastic hobby. People love it and I love doing it. I just listen to members’ needs and try to respond to them.
We found that there’s a niche of biologists who want biology to be easy to engineer and a bunch of engineers who want to engineer biology. That’s the beautiful intersection.
We’ve attracted people like Eric Schmidt, Steve Wozniak, Vinod Khosla. And all the big names in biology … Drew Endy, George Church, Francis Collins. Gov. Gavin Newsom came to our conference last year. Also Ian Watson, former assistant director for biotechnology and biosecurity at the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. So we’re really packing a punch.
Our ability to program biology could drive the economy for the next century. And Silicon Valley is investing heavily in it.