Yo!

Technology.

What is it all about?

Imagine we're trying to take a rail car full of explosive ammonium nitrate,

something that could be the fuel for bombs and really disastrous types of stuff,

and replace that with the equivalent of like a handful of baker's use.

That's what we're trying to do.

Yeah. like a handful of baker's use. That's what we're trying to do. Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes

and inside the minds of the top people in tech.

I'm your host, Danny Forts in the West Coast correspondent for the Sunday Times.

And this week, I have a favor to ask.

I want you to envision a giant industrial plant.

You know the ones I'm talking about with the big towers and smokestacks belching

CO2 or whatever it may be into the atmosphere. Now, what if you could take one of these

giant factories and shrink it down to so small that it was effectively invisible.

But it could still perform the same function.

That is what this week's guest has done.

And it's a big deal.

On the program is Karsten Temi.

He's the co-founder of a company called Pivot Bio, which is a startup out here in Berkeley.

And what they've done is basically genetically engineer microbes to manufacture nitrogen fertilizer that today is produced in these huge plants.

And the problem with that whole process, as you might expect, is it is one of the single most polluting industries in the world.

...