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/

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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. 

@cxarramirez

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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 Biotech
00:19 Welcome to the Climate Biotech Podcast
00:46 Meet Maria: From the Amazon to Biotech
01:50 Maria's Early Inspirations and Career Path
04:24 The Journey to Ginkgo Bioworks
10:49 Challenges and Innovations in Biomanufacturing
13:16 The Importance of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes
16:38 Scaling Sustainable Biomanufacturing
21:21 The Broader Impact of Biomanufacturing
25:25 Future Visions and Final Thoughts
33:33 Rapid Fire Questions and Closing Remarks

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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/

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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.

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Cryptocurrency and climate biotechnology might seem like an unusual pairing, but Albert Anis, founding steward of ValleyDAO, is showing this combination has remarkable potential. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are creating entirely new funding mechanisms for scientists working on our planet's most critical challenges.

At the heart of ValleyDAO's approach is a radical rethinking of how intellectual property can be governed and commercialized. Through "IP NFTs" (non-fungible tokens representing intellectual property), communities of token holders can collectively participate in funding research, making governance decisions, and advancing technologies from lab to marketplace. By creating aligned communities around specific scientific innovations, ValleyDAO provides more than just funding – it delivers expertise, connections, and sustained support through the challenging commercialization process.

While traditional science funding faces significant cuts and challenges, new tools like AI and crypto could help create opportunities for bottom-up innovation. This tension is precisely where transformative new approaches can emerge.

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What if we could harness nature's most precise chemical tools and make them work in industrial settings? James Weltz, co-founder and CSO of Cascade Bio, reveals how enzyme immobilization technology is transforming chemical manufacturing by stabilizing delicate biological catalysts.

From his childhood exploring chemical plants with his industrial hygienist father to his groundbreaking PhD research, Weltz shares the journey that led to Cascade Bio's revolutionary polymer brush technology. This innovation allows enzymes to maintain their remarkable catalytic properties while anchored to solid surfaces – converting them from fragile biological molecules into robust industrial catalysts that can operate in continuous flow processes.

The implications are profound. While enzymes have long promised atomic precision in chemical transformations, their instability has limited industrial adoption. Cascade's technology preserves nearly 100% of enzyme activity during immobilization (compared to just 1% with conventional methods), allowing these biocatalysts to withstand higher temperatures, function in organic solvents, and operate continuously for much longer periods.

Weltz walks us through real-world applications already making an impact – from nitrile hydratase producing acrylamide for rubber manufacturing to penicillin G-acylase creating antibiotics at massive scale. More exciting possibilities await, including true recycling of plastics and remediation of "forever chemicals" like PFAS. The conversation extends to multi-enzyme cascades that perform complex chemical transformations outside cells, potentially recreating cellular pathways in industrial settings.

The melding of computational protein design with robust immobilization technologies may finally deliver on biotech's promise of "infinitely scalable, atomically precise" chemical manufacturing. As Welts puts it, these innovations could transform how we produce the materials our modern world depends on – making them compatible with human and planetary health.

Join this deep dive into the cutting edge of industrial biocatalysis, where nature's chemical tools are being reimagined for a more sustainable future.

(00:00) Introduction to Enzyme Immobilization
(00:18) Welcome to the Climate Biotech Podcast
(01:09) Meet James Weltz: A Leader in Enzyme Immobilization
(01:43) The Potential of Enzyme Immobilization in Climate Biotech
(02:21) James Weltz's Background and Early Influences
(08:31) Understanding Enzyme Immobilization
(10:03) The Importance and Benefits of Enzyme Immobilization
(19:41) Challenges and Innovations in Enzyme Immobilization
(24:10) Case Study: Lipase Enzymes
(25:25) Dramatic Improvements in Enzyme Technology
(25:45) Enzyme Stability and Industrial Applications
(27:22) The GPT Moment for Enzyme Work
(28:09) Exciting Examples of Enzyme Applications
(30:48) Community Questions: AI and Enzyme Design
(39:18) Challenges and Opportunities in the Enzyme Industry
(41:38) Future of Enzyme Technology and Rapid Fire Questions

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What happens when brilliant scientific innovation meets masterful storytelling? 

Marketing rarely tops the priority list for scientists and biotech founders who are deep in the technical challenges of making their innovations work. Yet without effective communication, even groundbreaking discoveries risk languishing in obscurity, unable to attract the talent, funding, and partnerships necessary to scale their impact.

In this illuminating conversation, Dan Goodwin welcomes marketing experts Erum Azeez Khan and Karl Schmieder — from Messaginglab and the Grow Everything Biotech Podcast — who work with science-driven companies to elevate their stories and impact. With their unique backgrounds spanning biochemistry, creative writing, and entrepreneurship, they share insights on transforming complex scientific concepts into compelling narratives that resonate with investors, partners, and the public.

Through revealing case studies like K18 Hair (which sold to Unilever for nearly $1 billion after just three years) and Cultivarium, we explore how effective scientific storytelling creates tangible business results and exame how scientific innovators must adapt their messaging to emphasize performance advantages.

Whether you're a scientist, entrepreneur, investor, or simply curious about how ideas spread, this episode offers practical wisdom on making people care about innovations that could shape our collective future.

(00:00) Introduction to Climate Biotech Podcast
(00:35) Meet the Hosts: Dan Goodwin
(00:51) Special Guests: Erum Azeez and Karl Schmeider
(01:37) The Importance of Storytelling in Science
(02:26) Marketing Strategies for Scientists
(03:41) Getting to Know Karl and Erum
(05:03) Erum's Journey from Pharma to Marketing
(07:34) Karl's Path to Biotech Marketing
(09:58) The Role of a Fractional CMO
(14:26) Effective Storytelling Techniques
(21:09) The Value of Blogging and Content Creation
(24:20) The Attention Economy and Google's 7-11-4 Rule
(25:11) Maximizing Content Reach Across Platforms
(26:23) Case Study: K18 Hair's Science Storytelling Success
(29:08) Leveraging Experts for Market Differentiation
(29:57) Case Study: Verium's Strategic Growth
(31:39) Shifts in Climate Biotech Narratives
(37:25) The Importance of Language and Buzzwords
(40:18) Rapid Fire Questions and Closing Thoughts

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In our latest episode of the Climate Biotech Podcast, we explore where science meets business with Jesse Lou, the CEO of Conductor Labs. 

Jesse shares his unique insights into the indispensable role of Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA) in guiding the commercialization of climate technologies. We then explore a particular use case — biomining — with  Jayme Feyhl-Buska of Homeworld Collective.

As innovators in biotech, it's paramount to understand that while groundbreaking ideas hold great promise, success hinges on solid economic foundations. Failure to integrate economic considerations early in the innovation process often leads to avoidable pitfalls. By adopting a proactive approach to TEAs, scientists can identify crucial economic factors, optimize resource allocation, and pivot when necessary, thus bridging the gap between technical advancement and market reality.

In this episode, we discuss how TEAs not only function as internal decision-making tools but also as compelling narratives used to engage investors and the wider community. A well-structured TEA can convincingly present a technology's real-world value, portraying its scientific merit and expected economic returns. 

Join us for this enlightening discussion to understand how embedding economic thinking into scientific endeavors is not just advisable but essential for driving impactful climate solutions. 

(00:00) Introduction to Climate Biotech Podcast
(00:48) Guest Introduction: Jesse Lou
(02:10) Jesse's Early Life and Education
(03:31) Career Journey: From Engineering to Climate Biotech
(04:48) The Importance of Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA)
(10:45) Challenges and Misconceptions in TEA
(18:34) Current Work and Future Directions
(23:35) Introducing Jayme Feyhl-Buska
(24:08) Introduction to Mining and Bioleaching
(24:30) Challenges in Mining Technology Adoption
(25:06) Learning and Implementing TEAs
(25:58) Importance of Process Flows and Communication
(27:37) Insights from Mining Conferences
(28:59) The Role of TEAs in Decision Making
(30:51) Focus on Copper Bioleaching
(32:03) Challenges in Copper Heap Leaching
(34:32) Modeling and Parameterizing TEAs
(37:06) Communicating Error and Risk in TEAs
(42:04) Rapid Fire Questions with Jesse
(45:33) Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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How can biotechnology revolutionize heavy industries and convert carbon waste into a valuable resource?

In this special cross-posted episode—from our friends Erum and Karl at the Grow Everything Biotech Podcast and Messaginglab—we feature Moji Karimi, co-founder of Cemvita, a company leading the way in carbon conversion technology.

Moji shares Cemvita’s journey from a bold vision in industrial biotech to real-world solutions that repurpose carbon emissions into valuable products. From reshaping the energy and mining sectors to exploring applications in aerospace, he highlights the power of harnessing nature’s processes for sustainability.

Join us as we explore the evolving relationship between biotech and heavy industry—and a future where carbon waste is no longer a liability, but an opportunity.

(00:00) Introduction to Climate Biotech Podcast
(00:46) Special Episode Introduction
(03:22) Interview with Moji Karimi Begins
(04:02) Founding of Cemvita
(06:59) CO2 Utilization and Early Projects
(09:27) Navigating Platform vs. Product
(14:26) Spinning Out Subsidiaries
(25:29) Partnerships and Future Plans
(31:59) The Importance of Biodiversity in Climate Solutions
(32:28) Innovative Nature-Based Solutions
(33:49) The Role of Carbon Conversion in Biotech
(34:40) Cemvita's Unique Approach to Carbon Utilization
(36:47) Scaling Up: Challenges and Strategies
(44:17) Building a Company Culture
(49:18) Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
(52:56) Working with Family: Pros and Cons
(54:59) Final Thoughts and Future Vision

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