EP131. Synthetic biology and sourdough starter cosmetics

A few months ago, I was exploring the concept of biotechnology in beauty as I wanted to understand the topic better. And as I was browsing around I came across an article on the Grow by Ginkgo website, which is a fascinating place to spend time if you ever need some new reading material. And while I was there, I found an article on the way that synthetic biology is changing how beauty companies do business. And when I got halfway through that article, I couldn't believe my eyes when I read a quote from a specialist in synthetic biology who was quoted as saying that he envisions a future where bacteria is king and where you might give a friend the skincare equivalent of a sourdough bread starter so that they can grow their own moisturizer at home. Well, as you can probably imagine at this point, my eyes almost popped out of my head reading this statement. What does that mean? What does that look like? Does this mean that home formulation could be so mainstream in the future that I would be able to pass my skincare starter onto my friends for them to grow their own serum at home? I was so fascinated that I had to explore this topic and I immediately reached out to the author on LinkedIn to find out more. Well, you'll be glad to hear that he got back to me straight away and was more than happy to talk synthetic biology. So settle in for a sneak peek into what could be the beauty industry's future. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make or sell your green beauty formulations. In my weekly episodes, I explore the sustainability of the beauty industry and encourage you to join me in changing the industry for the better. I'm your host, Lorraine Dallmeyer. I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. We have thousands and thousands of students in over 180 countries around the world who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. And if you want to be the first person to know what's happening in green beauty, make sure you subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app. So in today's episode I am joined by Jake Wintermute who is the developer evangelist at Ginkgo Bioworks, a US based biotech company whose mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo designs custom organisms that bring new products to life for countless applications. Jake holds a PhD in Systems Biology from Harvard University and before coming to Ginkgo Jake spent 10 years as a teacher, researcher and group leader at the CRI in Paris in France, where his lab studied drug discovery for neglected diseases, citizen science and synthetic bio synbio education. As Ginkgo's developer evangelist, his mission is to grow the biotech ecosystem, to diversify the bioeconomy and to provide education, documentation and support for developers bringing new projects to Ginkgo's platform. Hi Jake, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great, thanks. It's great to be here.

Oh, I am thrilled to have you here because I am fascinated by everything we're going to talk about and I know our listeners will be too. So let's start at the top. What is synthetic biology and is it the same as biotechnology?

Ah, so that's a great question. So synthetic biology, it has been described as genetic engineering on steroids. It is the next generation of genetic engineering. So it is a technology for programming cells, for using data science and using principles of engineering to understand and appreciate the complexity of nature and then to build things using biology. So we in synthetic biology, we think of ourselves as, as DNA program, commerce, anything that nature can create. We look for the genes that are responsible for that creation and we try to rewire them to create new products using biology.

Wow, it sounds incredible and very futuristic. How is synthetic biology already being used in cosmetic formulation?

Ah, that's a great question. So the present of synthetic biology is all about sustainability and cost. So if you can find a natural product out there in nature that is maybe not being produced in a, in a particularly cost effective or a sustainable way. So maybe it's a plant that is competing with tropical rainforests, for example, or maybe it's a molecule or an essential oil that is produced at quite a low yield. So it's difficult to make. In synthetic biology we can transfer some of the genes that are responsible for producing that particular substance. We can put them into a fast growing organism, like a baker's yeast, for example, and we can grow them in fermentation tanks and we can produce the same molecule in a much cheaper way and in a much more sustainable way. So molecules being produced like that are, they're already a part of cosmetics formulations. They're already making cosmetics cheaper and more sustainable.

So basically it's all about the ingredients that go into the formulation themselves, which can be made synthetically in a lab, effectively.

That's right. I mean you can think about it as synthetically in a lab, but these are living organisms, right? This is not a, it's not a chemical process. These are, these are complex, living, thriving yeast, for example. And so I think working with these organisms is a, it's a lot different from what you might imagine in the kind of a laboratory, the sterile laboratory environment for producing synthetic chemicals. It's a very complex process. It's a very vibrant process. Growing yeast. It's, it's, it's a lot like growing anything. It's a, it's a, it's a living organism.

Well, let's tie into that for a minute then. Yeast seems to obviously be a big player in synthetic biology, based on what you've described already. So how is yeast able to grow, let's say a chamomile extract, for instance. Could you please explain in layperson's terms how this works?

It's a great example. I don't know about if it's being done specifically for chamomile, but it certainly could be done in principle. So you go into your chamomile flower. You've got to sequence the genome. That's the first thing. So you cut off a little bit of leaf and you, you grind it up and you extract the DNA and you put it into a DNA sequencing machine. And a little bit later you've got a, you've got the chamomile genome. That's step one. Step two is you've got to find the genes that are responsible for producing that particular essence of chamomile that you want in your product. And so that's, that's a little bit more complicated. So that's, this is a DNA science challenge. You've got to go into all of those DNA sequences, those as T's, C's and G's, and you look for things that look like sequences that look like enzymes. So enzymes are proteins. They are responsible for catalyzing a particular chemical process. You can think of them as the machines in an assembly line that puts together the molecules that are the essence of chamomile, that are the produce, the flavor, the fragrance of a chamomile flower. So you've got to identify those. Now you found them, so now you've got to get them into a yeast. So we can do that primarily these days through DNA synthesis. You can take these long sequences of letters and assemble them in a DNA synthesis machine to produce the same genetic information that you would have in a chamomile flower, but now in a naked DNA molecule coming from a DNA synthesis machine. Then you've got to transfer that into a yeast cell. So you've got to. You've got to convince the yeast to take up this foreign DNA and to incorporate it into its own genome. That's actually one of the easier parts of the process. Yeast. They love taking up foreign DNA. They're very good at it. It's something that they. They do naturally. They look for pieces of DNA floating around in their environment. They take them up, they swap them out for pieces of their. Their own genome. So they're, they're very happy to do that. And then if you're lucky, you've got a yeast now that is. Contains the. The chemical machinery for producing the essence of a chamomile flower. This is the beginning of the process. You've now, you've now produced a very small amount of this chamomile extract in a yeast. And so you can grow it like a sourdough starter. You can grow it like you would ferment a beer. And what comes out of it is, it is a kind of a funny mix of chamomile and yeast. It's. This is now a hybrid thing. So this is the beginning of the process. And what comes next is there's a need to. A sort of an appreciation for the, the complexity of these organisms. A yeast is not a chamomile. It, you know, it does metabolism in a. In a. In a slightly different way. So you really do need a sense of complexity for these enzymes, for these metabolic pathways that are producing these very rich natural products. So, first of all, so that the yeast will stay happy while they're doing this thing that is unusual for them. You need the yeast to grow abundantly so that the product is successful and then finally to. To sort of capture this relatively complex essence of a natural product now that you've moved it outside of its natural home. So it's very rare that a particular natural product is. It's not just one molecule. It's not something that you can purify necessarily to a single reduced essence. There's a. There's an art to it, there's a complexity to it. And so the final and most difficult stage of producing a chamomile extract in yeast is the art form of creating a balanced formulation, of turning this kind of molecular factory, this living thing that is making chamomile for us and converting it into a formulation that is beautiful, that someone will actually want to use as much as we, as we like to use chamomile.

Wow. Thank you. That was fascinating. First of all, and thank you for breaking it down so very clearly. I'm fascinated where this could go. I mean, in theory, I suppose, you could make any single ingredient for use in your formulations moving forward. So do you think that synthetic biology could lead to an ingredient revolution?

Yes. So this is what gets me up in the morning. It's kind of like we are looking at nature for the first time in terms of just the scope of natural products that are now accessible to us in terms of the way that we are able to interact with these naturally occurring molecules and formulations. So we've really never had the ability to grow this much before. So we think of chamomile, for example. Right. So chamomile. Beautiful, beautiful. Great tea. Love it. It's a natural product. It was. It evolved out there in nature. Not for us, not for our sake, not to be delicious and beautiful and to create. Create beauty for us. Essentially, it's a coincidence that these flowers were something that we loved from nature that also were amenable to being grown and harvested with the technologies that we've historically had for cultivating natural products. It's essentially just a coincidence. There are certainly a lot of other chamomiles out there that are yet to be discovered that are. They're just as beautiful, they're just as unique that have been so far inaccessible to us just because we couldn't cultivate them. They just didn't like to grow in the. In the way that humans like to grow things. And so now with bioproduction technologies, we can go back, we can take a look at all of these other plants, all of these other microbes, all of these other natural extracts that all of a sudden are. Are accessible to our formulations and can create a completely new variety of products. Just like we're looking at nature again for the first time.

Wow. So we're looking at the amazing possibilities of what synthetic biology could mean for us. And I can see so many of the benefits in terms of us creating ingredients in a cleaner way with. Without potentially using so many resources. However, of course, there are critics out there, and I think I need to bring some of those points to the table today as well, to see how we can go through some of their critiques. And some people say that synthetic biology could, in theory, create new life forms that haven't evolved over billions of years in our environment. We don't know how they'll behave. What do you think the risks are to using synthetic biology?

Yeah, I'm quite sympathetic to a lot of. To the criticisms of genetically modified organisms and to the criticisms of. Of synthetic biology. This industry has a lot to atone for. I think that the way that the industry has been structured in the past has been too siloed. It's lacked accountability. People haven't felt the need to engage with the public or to listen to the public. And I think a lot of that comes from the nature of the early bioproduction technologies. They were just, they were so expensive, they were so difficult to work with that they were really only accessible for a very small number of extremely high profit applications. In the early days, that's what biotechnology looked like. So you could only do it, you know, there was a handful of crops, there were a few pharmaceutical ingredients, and that's what you could make with bioproduction. And so because there was, there was so much money at stake because the technology was so expensive, there was so much investment going into this, it created a kind of a very defensive mentality. So people, they didn't want to talk to the public, they didn't want to share their secrets, and they didn't want any kind of compromise that might reduce the profit that was available in a, in a particular biotechnology. So at least in my mind, a big part of the very justified skepticism of GMOs comes from this very centralized, very hierarchical structure of our industry in the early days where there just weren't incentives to care about what people think. So luckily, this is changing, this is changing. So it doesn't cost a billion dollars anymore to produce a particular bioproduct. It's a, it's a much more accessible technology, there's a lot more applications for it. And working in this industry is now much more an exercise in serving a much wider and more diverse audience, both in terms of the developers, the people who are making this technology and the products that they make, and the way that they interact with the public. A lot of the incentives have, have changed. And I think to, to put it very bluntly, my industry simply cannot succeed without the public trust. If people do not trust us, we will, we will fail. We will not, they will not buy our products, we will not make money, we will not be able to do our bioproduction, we will not create more sustainable or cheaper forms of bioproducts. We won't have access to this wider palette of natural ingredients that I love so much. Without trust it all, it all goes away. Increasingly, people in the industry, they think the way that I do. And so there is a real need to, just to change this conversation, to listen more and to bring the public inside in the way that we use these technologies. That was my SOAPBOX But I didn't answer the question because the question was, what are the risks with any new technology? There's a wide range of risks. I think that a lot of them are probably a bit more subtle and a bit more complicated than people might imagine when they think about the risks of a new biotechnology. So you might imagine, oh, there's going to be like, oh, a yeast is going to escape from the lab and take over Manhattan, you know.

Yeah, chamomile everywhere.

Chamomile everywhere, Right. The whole, the whole world converted into nothing but chamomile extract. That particular scenario is pretty unlikely just because it's like a garden, right? It's the, these, these organisms that they, that they cultivate, they grow under the, under our conditions, under the conditions that we prefer. They're, they're much more like our pets, which is to say that they wouldn't, they wouldn't really survive for very long out in nature. And at least in the context of, of bioproduction of natural ingredients, the genes that we are using are, they're quite mundane. They're harmless. The chamomile genes are, they don't pose a threat to human health. And if they move around a little bit in nature, well, there's always been genes moving around out in nature. And so I don't think those particular threats are pretty unlikely, in my view. I spend a lot more time thinking about more, more subtle threats or more subtle mistakes that we might make as we bring this biotechnology more into the mainstream, as we make it more economically available to more people. The company that I work, Ginkgo, we say you have to care about how your platform is being used. Particularly in the cosmetics space, there are a lot more subtle interactions between the cosmetics that we use, the body images that we promote, the idea of beauty that we promote that could be enabled through biotechnology that I'm a little bit more, more hesitant about. So I think, I think that the main risks associated with building this new kind of bioproduct industry for cosmetics are similar to the kind of risks that the cosmetics industry has always faced. And as we build these new, these, these new kind of technologies, we have to make sure that we're using them in ways that, that actually create beauty and that don't create oppression. Right? Or shame.

Yes, absolutely. So, I mean, looking further at some of the criticism, I've been reading up online to see what people were saying about synthetic biology, and I also saw a few critics say that they think ingredients created by synthetic biology should be labeled accordingly on their consumer products. How do you feel about this viewpoint?

I'm neutral. I'm open to labeling the synthetic biology industry. We should be proud of what we do. We should be open about what we do. I heart GMO sticker on the back of my laptop. I'm not embarrassed about it. The time is long gone when the industry can play this kind of double game where they, they get the benefits of a new technology. But, oh, maybe they're not, they're not so sure about the, you know, the branding consequences of it. And so they sort of hide and they obfuscate. You can't get away with that anymore. People will sense that you're being inauthent around your technology and they won't trust you. And so without trust, the industry can't. I'm certainly in favor of transparency around GMOs. I'm quite proud. I'm proud of synthetic biology derived ingredients. I think they're making cosmetics better, cheaper and more sustainable. So I think that we should be proud about that. So all that said, there is a little bit of a, there's a bit of a bad faith issue in the labeling. Many of the arguments that are sort of pro labeling are not really in favor of transparency per se, but rather in a kind of a putting a mark of shame on a particular product like you would like, as though it were a warning label. Right. And not.

Yeah, that's a fair point.

Yeah. And not merely providing information. And so in that sense, I don't think that's quite fair. I think that thinking about it as a warning label is in general inaccurate. But in terms of, you know, built with synthetic biology, that's a label that I wear with pride.

Well, let's talk about that pride for a minute. Are big brands, big beauty brands, embracing synthetic biology or are they still reluctant to get involved? Is this perhaps even too futuristic at the moment for mainstream beauty?

It is a little bit. Yes. Yes. I think the answer is, is yes. Certain. So they love sustainability. Certainly the big brands are big on sustainability. And so the sustainability arguments that we can make from synthetic biology are very persuasive. The big brands are. They're understandably cautious about risks to their brand. They're cautious about the public perception of synthetic biology. In that sense, they're slow to adapt to the technologies and they're certainly slow to promote it. So change is more likely to come through smaller brands. I think that we'll find smaller brands embracing synthetic biology, embracing these newer, these weirder kinds of bioproducts. Once a smaller brand sort of finds the formula finds the right way to bring this technology into the mainstream, I think that we'll see the bigger brands getting on board.

Fascinating. Well, I will be fascinated to see the smaller brands who do jump on the bandwagon. Now, the whole reason, obviously, that we're having this podcast today is because I read a fascinating article in which you were quoted as saying that you envision a future where bacteria is king and, and you might give a friend the skincare equivalent of a sourdough bread starter so that they can grow their own moisturizer at home. I mean, I read that and I was just fascinated. So let's imagine for a minute that we get to that future and we can grow our own moisturizers at home. How would that even work?

Yeah, let's go. Let's go. Right, that's the future. That's the future. Right? And it's. Let's talk about two to futuristic for the big brands. This is the exciting thing. Right? So biology is different. Biology is not like other technologies. You have to appreciate that biology grows itself. Essential oils don't. Don't grow themselves. Fine chemicals don't grow themselves. Computers don't grow themselves. It's utterly unique to biology. Biology is us. Biology is our. The human body is. Is itself biology. We're. We're biology.

We could.

The. The bacteria that live on our skin, that could be a cosmetics formulation. The proteins that are. That are specific to our sweat, that could be a cosmetics formulation. These, these are found in nature, on the human body. Right. The human body is also part of nature. So this is another way that biology is completely unique, opens up these completely new possibilities for how we could think about what a cosmetic is. So, right, why not a moisturizer that's. That's a sourdough starter? In principle, anything that biology can make, you can make with a, with a bacteria or with a. Or with a yeast. And therefore you can grow it in your home. Zero cost. Right, at the, at the cost of a sourdough starter and share it with your friends. Right? Why not? That is completely within the realm of possibility for a biological, a living technology. And so I think that if we, like, if we really want to move this industry forward into this much more biological future, we have to be willing to entertain these completely unique technical possibilities that come. Come from biology. It's not just about replacing existing ingredients with things that are a little bit more sustainable. There's a. There's a whole new world of biological applications that are opening up to us.

Amazing. Well, I can't wait to explore that, that whole new world, because it fits very well with, of course, what we talk about here at Formula Botanica, about the fact that everyone can formulate. So the idea of being able to sort of pass your skincare starter onto your friend fascinates me. But let's see where we get to in the future. As a final question, I wanted to ask if you could share some of the cool projects that you get to work on where synthetic biology and plants and beauty intersect. And I know you've got lots of examples, but are there any that you could talk us through? You mentioned one, for instance, when we had our chat a couple of weeks ago about a rose, I believe.

Yes, that's right. So there was the. There was the extinct flower project called Resurrecting the Sublime. And so this was a collaboration between Ginkgo Bioworks and an artist that we know called Daisy Ginsburg and a smell artist called Cecil Tolas. Resurrecting the Sublime. So what they did. So this was. I personally, I wasn't involved with this project, but, but a lot of my friends at Ginkgo were, was they go to the, the Harvard Herbarium to find examples of preserved dried flower specimens that are now extinct, that are now extinct, that are now not found anywhere in the world. Right. They exist only in these, in these books at the Harvard Herbarium. Take a little, tiny little sample of the leaf, enough to extract the DNA, enough to sequence the genomes of these extract flowers, much like we were talking about chamomile. You can do the same thing with any flower, including flowers that haven't been used ever before to make a natural product, including flowers that no longer grow anywhere in the world. So as we discussed before, they sequence the genome, they find the genes in these flowers that are responsible for fragrance, they transfer them en masse by, by the thousands into yeast, grow the yeast. Find these new fragrance molecules that the yeast are producing in this way, reconstruct a completely unique, completely new fragrance profile from these extinct flowers that you couldn't make any other way. You can't grow these flowers in your garden even if you wanted to. You can grow them in yeast. It's just a beautiful exhibit. If you ever get it, if you ever get a chance to see it. Resurrecting the Sublime. It's an extremely unique fragrance. I think on the, on the sort of technical side, what it shows is when you working in a biological organism brings so much more complexity, so much more inherent richness to the kind of products that you can get than Working with individual molecules, working through a specific chemical synthesis, because it's just. It's a very messy process, right? Just like a flower, it doesn't just produce one fragrance molecules, it produces dozens or hundreds. And the yeast are the same way. It's an irreducibly complex project. There's no other way to experience these fragrances than to get them directly from the living thing. The idea that we can. We can bring these completely new sensory experiences alive in yeast, I think it really captures everything that I'm excited about in synthetic biology.

It's absolutely fascinating. I'm also fascinated as to what a smell artist is, but I will be Googling that afterwards. Jake, it's been such a pleasure talking to you today. Really fascinating work. Thank you so much for breaking everything down so simply for us and for walking us through exactly what synthetic biology is and what it could potentially mean for cosmetics. If people want to learn more about you about Ginkgo Bioworks, about the topic in itself, where should they go?

So, yeah, you can check me out at Ginkgo Bioworks, where I work is called the Sociotechnical Studio. So you can go to Ginkgo Bioworks Sociotechnical Studio if you're interested in knowing more about this intersection between synthetic biology and art and design, and also politics and culture. We have a magazine called Grow Magazine which you can find Grow by Ginkgo. It's a physical print magazine because we exist in the living physical world, not the digital world. But you can get a copy of it for free. Grow by Ginkgo and yes, thank you so much. It was great to be here. I'm very excited to see what the next generation of formulators can come up with.

Thank you. And I do recommend everyone goes to download a copy of Grow by Ginkgo or order a copy because that's exactly where I found your quote in the first place. It's a fascinating publication. Thank you so much, Sheikh. This has been great.

Thank you.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Does the idea of synthetic biology fill you with excitement or horror? How do you feel about growing your ingredients in a lab rather than picking them? And could you imagine having your own skincare sourdough starter in the future? Please do come and leave us a comment on our social channels as both the Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you. Thank you for joining Jake and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations. I hope you enjoyed it and if you did, please do leave us a five star review so that other people can enjoy these conversations too. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever your favorite podcast app is, and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanica at Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter or LinkedIn. Visit our website at formulabotanica.com and sign up for a free online formulation course today.