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From Lab to Life: Exploring Synthetic Biology with Drew Endy, John Cumbers, and Jennifer Holmgren

Bankless

Bankless

Tech News, Technology, News

4.71.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2023

⏱️ 154 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. In this 8-episode series, we are exploring some new frontiers. New frontiers in new technologies, all of which are poised to completely revolutionize the world and change everything about the operating system that society is currently running.

Synthetic biology is a fascinating field that combines biology, engineering, and computer science to design and construct new biological systems. By manipulating and reprogramming the DNA of living organisms, scientists can create new functions and traits that do not occur naturally. It's like rewriting the instruction manual of life itself, similar to how we write computer code.

In this video, you'll hear from three leaders in the synthetic biology industry—Drew Endy, John Cumbers, and Jennifer Holmgren—who will expand our understanding and imagination of this exciting field.

Keep an eye out as we roll out the rest of these boundary-pushing episodes!

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Timestamps

0:00 Intro
0:50 What is Synthetic Biology?
3:35 The Guests

7:45 DREW ENDY
11:00 Biological Building Blocks
14:15 Understanding the Cell
18:30 The Power of Wetware
22:30 Code and DNA
28:00 The Business Model
30:30 The Biological Revolution
37:00 Longevity
39:20 The Landscape of Possibility

51:00 JOHN CUMBERS
54:30 The Synthetic Biology Rabbit Hole
58:30 Fermentation
1:03:15 Scaling the Revolution
1:07:00 Programming Nature
1:11:45 SciFi Infrastructure
1:19:15 A Grand Vision
1:23:00 Hijacking Biology
1:26:30 A Beautiful Future

1:33:45 JENNIFER HOLMGREN
1:36:00 Building a Circular Economy
1:40:00 Lanzatech
1:44:30 The Renewable Ethylene Business
1:48:30 The Fermentation Revolution
1:51:40 Biological Utopia

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Resources

Drew Endy
https://twitter.com/DrewEndy?s=20 

John Cumbers 
https://twitter.com/johncumbers?s=20 

Jennifer Holmgren
https://twitter.com/TodaDogs?s=20 

Lanzatech
https://lanzatech.com/ 

Checkerspot
https://checkerspot.com/ 

Biomason
https://biomason.com/ 

Adidas Jacket
https://www.tennispro.eu/adidas-melbourne-reversible-jacket-582214.html#description 

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Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here:
⁠https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ 

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to Banquist, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance.

0:09.0

And today, on this episode of our Zaloo series, we are exploring some new frontiers, new

0:13.4

frontiers, and new technologies, all of which are poised to completely revolutionize the

0:17.8

world and change everything about the operating system that society is currently running.

0:22.5

On this episode, we are exploring the frontier of synthetic biology, or sin bio, for short.

0:28.1

Learning synthetic biology is hard. Learning synthetic biology is a little bit like learning crypto.

0:33.2

First, it's very confusing, and then you have an aha moment, and then you see things like you've

0:38.7

never seen them before, and there's no going back. So I'll do my best to first give you a primer

0:43.4

before we enter our conversations with three of the biggest leaders in the synthetic biology

0:47.0

world, including Drew N.D., the father of modern synthetic biology. So here we go.

0:52.6

Synthetic biology combines biology, engineering, and computer science to design and construct

0:58.9

new biological systems. With synthetic biology, you can manufacture biological components

1:05.5

using biology. So synthetic biology is all about manipulating and reprogramming the DNA of living

1:12.4

organisms to create new functions or traits that do not occur naturally, yet are still produced

1:18.7

with organic means. We all know DNA as the instruction manual for living things.

1:25.2

Simply put, synthetic biology is the act of rewriting DNA so that we can write our own instruction

1:31.4

manual, like how we would write our own computer code. DNA is a touring, complete,

1:36.1

computational platform, so the products that come out of synthetic biology are quite literally

1:40.8

limitless. We can do anything. It's just a matter of how do we get the biological components to

1:45.9

actually ingest the new DNA that we write, like computer code. There are simple and down-to-earth

1:51.8

applications of synthetic biology such as engineering bacteria to produce medicines more efficiently.

1:56.9

We can modify crops to make them more resistant to pests or drought. But the real reason why

...

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