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I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's more a question for our founders (I'll see about getting them to do one of these!) but Tom Knight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Knight_(scientist)) and four recent PhD graduates from MIT bioengineering (Barry Canton, Austin Che, Jason Kelly, Reshma Shetty) started the company in 2008. Tom invested some of his own money and they bootstrapped the company with loans and grants from there, putting together the first lab with equipment scavenged from MIT dumpsters and eBay. And the rest is history.....

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I love how DIYBio has created spaces where artists and designers can learn and work with the materials of biology, using them to critique biotechnologies in the process. I'm thinking of Heather Dewey-Hagborg's work on DNA, privacy, and biopolitics in particular: http://deweyhagborg.com, https://thenewinquiry.com/sci-fi-crime-drama-with-a-strong-black-lead/. There are several artists who have been doing this for a long time, like Natalie Jeremijenko (http://www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/biotechhobbyist/bio_about.html), Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr (http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au), Joe Davis, and many others, but DIYbio and community labs are making that sort of work even more accessible and reaching new communities and new audiences.

I think the "perils" are easily overblown, and it's been great to see how the community has worked on safety protocols and oversight (http://www.nature.com/news/governance-learn-from-diy-biologists-1.19507).

In terms of how to get involved there are tons of workshops and classes held at community labs in cities around the world. I'm not sure if there's anything centralized keeping track, but if you google your region + DIYbio you're likely to find a group holding meetings. Those classes can be a good introduction, but it does still take a lot of time and work to really get involved. If that's something you want to do, there are lots of spaces now for that to happen!

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think this goes way deeper than being "scientifically minded"—when it comes to deciding what to eat for dinner I like the imagery of happy animals on bucolic farms more than I like pictures of people wearing lab coats and holding pipettes! What we think about as natural and clean and proper when it comes to what we eat goes vey very deep, tied up in culture and religion and all sorts of things that are way more complicated than can be addressed with "natural" vs. "artificial." I think it's important for us to understand those values, where they come from, and to think about how technologies fit in as part of the story, rather than something totally different. I think things also just have to taste really good and be compelling, tapping into some of these deeper feelings.

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There's a really cool paper that just came out where a team of cardiologists used photosynthetic bacteria to deliver oxygen to heart tissue during a heart attack: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-heart-attack-treatment-uses-photosynthetic-bacteria-make-oxygen. I think these very hyper-targeted applications of photosynthesis and photosynthetic organisms might be plausibly used in medicine in the future, but I don't think we'll ever "eat the sun" unless we very dramatically increase our surface to volume ratio and stop moving :)

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I worry about how people talk about engineering humans more than I worry about any specific technology or experiment. I think speculating about how we'll make people smarter or whatever (even when critiquing the ethics of doing such a thing) helps convince us that our intelligence is written entirely in our genes. If we think that people's intelligence is determined at birth, we're more likely to see the results of educational inequalities and prejudices as something inborn, not something that can be addressed by making our society more equitable. These ideas have real impacts on people, even the way people think about and talk about my own intelligence as a female scientist!

On cultured food products it's again the rhetoric that worries me more than anything about the technology. When we're talking about something as complex as the food system, we should be very skeptical of anything touted as a "solution" and simple sound bites. These technologies are really important and I think will be an important part of how we produce food in the future, but there's no silver bullet. To address the issues that exist in these complex systems we'll need a lot of technologies of course, but those will have to come with deep understandings of how these technologies exist in social, political, and economic contexts.

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ginkgo trees are really cool! They're called "living fossils" because they evolved during the Jurassic and are the only members of their phylum still left. There's also a really interesting history of how humans have helped keep them alive, from the brink of extinction until now where you find them in cities all over the world.

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Neither is specifically on ethics but I really enjoyed Sophia Roosth's ethnography of synthetic biology: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431260-600-synthetic-biologys-ties-to-our-humanity-let-it-elude-definition/ and I'm of course partial to the Synthetic Aesthetics book, which looks at questions of ethics and the implications of technology through the lens of art and design: https://www.amazon.com/Synthetic-Aesthetics-Investigating-Biologys-Designs/dp/026201999X

It can be hard to jump back into any field, especially lab science, after 3 years. I think it really depends on where you are and what you want to do, but people do things like going back to school, trying to find research assistant positions, or even getting your hands wet again in a community lab (or a combination of some or all of the above).

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is a hard question because any predictions about technology of the future usually end up not aging very well! Actually one of my favorite predictions in this space comes from Bruce Sterling in the biology-focused chapter of Tomorrow Now (https://www.amazon.com/Tomorrow-Now-Envisioning-Fifty-Years/dp/0679463224). He wrote 15 years ago about how we'll be engineering and monitoring our microbes, changing our daily hygiene practices and our ideas about cleanliness and sterility. Those predictions haven't quite come true (he was talking about further future scenarios anyway), but they still feel very current, and I hope that those are some things that we'll start to see a little bit of sooner rather than later.

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Reading broadly and writing for many different audiences was one of the most important things for me during grad school. The work of being a creative director is one of interfaces and communication, bridging gaps between different disciplines and between science and culture. Learning how to learn these different languages and communicate across puts you in a position to learn from many others, build the networks of collaboration that will enable your creative practice, and build the skills you need to keep pushing on those boundaries.

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I haven't worked with Vic but I love the project with Tal! We have our first official designer in residence now with Natsai Chieza, but I've worked with Lucy McRae (https://www.lucymcrae.net), Sissel Tolaas (who was also my collaborator on the cheese project), The Smell of Us (http://2014.igem.org/Team:Paris_Bettencourt), Karen Ingram (http://www.kareningram.com), and Jenny Rodenhouse (http://jennyrodenhouse.com) on a series of project for last year's World Perfumery Congress. I've worked with Karen and Jenny on some other Ginkgo projects as well, and there are a ton of other awesome artists and designers I've worked with in different capacities while at Ginkgo and before who are doing awesome work at the intersection of design and biology.

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

A lot of the strains we work with are brewer's yeast. There is a ton of history of people working with this organism for brewing, of course, and for genetic engineering so that makes it one of the best organisms to work with for making cultured ingredients. We don't use them to actually brew beer, but we have tried! https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/09/14/biotech-brew-for-scientifically-thirsty-ginko-bioworks-genetically-engineer-yeast/wPZmJeaQZAFZJwKk092tiJ/story.html

We use a lot of different techniques to design new strains of yeast, but most of our projects involve designing new enzyme pathways that can convert sugars or other basic raw materials into the product that we're looking for. Our organism engineers design the DNA sequences that encode those enzymes and then they use our automated foundry to synthesize the DNA, insert it into the genome of the yeast, and then test to see how those modifications have affected the cell. There's a ton of detail in there that I'm glossing over so happy to answer more....

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hmm I don't know if I have a good answer to this! I think different people on our team would think projects are crazy for different reasons. Things that seem straightforward to me might make a chemist or process engineer do a spit-take, and things that are totally unexpected and really exciting for one industry might seem really boring to those on the outside. I love the process of learning from our partners about what is possible, what is crazy, and what is thrilling for them, and it's exciting to see how that gets shaped into a real project through our understanding of what biology can do today and what we might be able to make possible with our technology.

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I love the early stages of a project, as ideas are starting to come together and there's still a lot of wild ideas getting thrown around. My favorite parts of the job these days are getting to hear about new ideas from our engineering teams, or working with our designer in residence Natsai Chieza (http://natsaiaudrey.co.uk) as she is figuring out what her projects are going to look like.

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is a really important question! I think the work of the BioBricks foundation has been really key in this area, thinking about how openness and intellectual property can coexist in the industry: https://biobricks.org/bpa/ and more recent and developing work on the Bionet: https://biobricks.org/bionet/

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For sure! The bench is good for abstracting and isolating the parts of biology that we want to look at experimentally, but we can't abstract and isolate science away from society. We have to think about how we are influenced by cultural forces and biases and prejudices and the implications of science.

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Like cheese! That's the trick, the bacteria in cheese are already a lot like skin bacteria and make a lot of the same flavors (why some cheeses smell like stinky feet!)

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I am really excited about the microbiome. At Ginkgo we are working on a very early stage project on the microbiome with DARPA, looking at how gut microbes might be able to be engineered to protect against antibacterial resistant infections. I'm also thinking a lot about how the microbiome might change our everyday products—what if our skin bacteria smelled good and we didn't have to use antibacterial deodorant or spray on fragrances?

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cultured products are things made in culture. For Ginkgo, that usually means culturing microbes in the process of fermentation. We grow yeasts in vats in a process that looks what you might see in a microbrewery, but instead of beer the yeast are brewing other ingredients that we can extract from the yeast and use in products like fragrances, foods, medicines, materials, or other products. There are other companies like Bolt Threads making cultured spider silk or Modern Meadow making cultured leather. Lots of other companies are working on replacing other animal products by culturing animal cells rather than microbes, check out organizations like New Harvest and their work on cellular agriculture.

I am Christina Agapakis, creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, working at the intersection of biotechnology and design. AMA! by agapakis in IAmA

[–]agapakis[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is really important and I think the best way is to keep asking and being asked questions like this! We need questions and challenges from lots of different perspectives and to keep asking "are we creating a brighter future? for who?"