TB 446 Natural Products through Synthetic Biology - Dr. Philipp Zerbe

Hi everybody, and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech podcast by Collabra.

Today is going to be a discussion of the intersection of natural products and synthetic biology, 2 ideas that seem like they belong in separate bins but can actually put together very well. And today we're fortunate to have a co-host. So welcome, Julia Ball. Hi, Julia.

Hi, how are you doing?

Doing great. Thank you very much for joining me here. And Julia was a student in plant molecular biology last fall and did a wonderful job. So she wanted to expand her horizons a touch and Well, tell me, why don't you tell us about it? So what, what's your interest in science communication and outreach?

Well, yeah, thank you, Dr. Folta. I am really interested right now in communicating science to audiences that don't necessarily relate to science or feel like they know anything about it. So that's what I want to do with my career in the future with science communication is Find a way to connect the general public with science and make sure they feel really excited about it, especially plant science.

Yeah, doesn't that make you crazy? All the cool things that we can do, yet so many of them are forbidden because of a public misunderstanding of science.

Definitely. Yeah, there are a lot of hot topics in plant science. I think agrobacteria-mediated transformation is one that I do in my lab with medicinal plants. That is, you know, something like genetic transformation or genetic modification. Those are words that the public might sometimes be a little bit afraid of when talking about food or medicine.

Yeah. The funny part for me is, is that we have all these awesome ways to do really good things for the environment, good things for people. You're talking about medicinal plants. So ways in which we may be able to elevate The presence of bioactive compounds that can benefit people, or maybe standardized formulations. All these things are so positive, yet the negative perception is still with us. And do you really think that we can educate ourselves out of this?

It's hard to educate ourselves out of an issue like this because so many people have previous biases and fears related to biotechnology. So first you have to connect with the public. On a personal level and gain people's trust. And then you can start talking and reversing the damage that has been done in the media.

Wow. You've been well trained.

I wonder who taught me that. Yeah.

Well, well, this is really great. I'm really glad that you're able to join me today. We mentioned that you were a student in my class at the University of Florida. You're in your senior year.

Yes. So my senior semester.

Last semester. And so what are you doing next?

I'm working in a lab in the University of Florida Horticultural Sciences Department. We study the biosynthetic pathways in all different types of crops and other plants that are important to human health. So one plant that I'm studying right now is a species in the genus Scutellaria called Scutellaria barbata. It's also known as skullcap, and this plant has a variety of different properties that are really beneficial for human health, and a lot of those properties come from these bioactive compounds that are made through different specialized metabolic pathways. So I'm really focused on improving those pathways through genetic engineering techniques. And then in the future, I am planning to pursue a PhD in plant biology. And the school that I'm going to is still unknown, but I am in the midst of applications right now.

Well, this is kind of timely then. So If somebody is listening and they go, here's somebody we must have in our program, they could technically actively recruit you.

That's true. They could. For anybody listening in, we're still here.

If it seems like Julia is a good fit, and she probably is, I can speak to her academic excellence and she's hanging out in a laboratory that probably doesn't, uh, doesn't tolerate a lot of slackers. I didn't know Dr., Dr. Kim is, uh, is a pretty serious scientist. And I think she probably is an excellent mentor for somebody if you're really interested in learning in that environment. So how do you like the laboratory work compared to the classroom?

Definitely. The lab work is what makes me so passionate about plant science. I love learning about things in the classroom, but you can only learn so much about a laboratory technique without getting your hands on it yourself. So I really enjoy it. I love working with tissue culture. That's one of my favorite things. Well, I've learned how to work with, especially working with tissue culture in very specific plant species that maybe haven't had a lot of exposure to the tissue culture realm before. So right now we're doing a bunch of different plant species. Not sure how much I can talk about certain ones.

Nah, but you don't have to. But that is, that is fun. That's my part too. You know, I was a solid B student because the laboratory wrecked my A average. I had too much fun in the lab and it was too easy to spend 80 hours a week in the laboratory and spend overnights when I should have been studying. But I had many talks with my advisor as to, well, it's the classroom that really gives you permission to be in the laboratory. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

Uh-huh.

Laboratory's where it's at. But in tissue culture, I've always had fun when someone hands me a species that's never been cultured before and says, figure it out. And, and we do.

Yeah.

The mistake everybody makes is they go in the literature and they say, okay, well, how did someone else do it? Because somebody else just went in and said, how did somebody else do it? So sitting down and pretending like you know nothing about the species and breaking the pattern. And that, that was always a joy of mine back, back when I had a whole lot more energy to do those things and stare at 1,000 plates every day. Okay. So let's cut to our guest. Our guest today is Dr. Philip Zerbe. He's a professor at the University of California, Davis. in beautiful Davis, California. Welcome to the podcast, Philip.

Thank you much, Kevin and Julia. I very much appreciate you having me.

Yeah, I appreciate having you aboard too. I always like going through your papers because you cover such a diversity of stuff and you kind of, you know, just like many, many different areas that range over such a large scale. But I'd really like to focus around today around synthetic biology and the production of natural products. And so just to kind of start off, could you please explain what synthetic biology is and why Why is this an attractive means to generate products that are otherwise present naturally?

Yeah, so starting off with the most difficult question, what's synthetic biology? It's such a broad field, and it continues to expand. If I were to define it, I would say it's really a field of science and research where we are using our knowledge of biological systems to design and engineer biological parts, processes, and entire organisms toward natural products that are helpful to various industry sectors. To the second part of the question, why do it? I think if we are really looking at plant natural products as, as say, the target product in this context, it gives a new alternate approach to extraction from just the natural producers to chemical synthesis where we can essentially harness the ingenuity of plants in making all this chemical diversity and redesign it towards natural products that we can make without having to tap into exploiting the natural resources. So the hope would be, right, finding ways to do it sustainably. And I think that's, for me, is where the hope in synthetic biology in the context of natural product lies.

Well, speaking on the ingenuity of plants and chemical diversity within those plants, I wanted to touch on the fact that your research focuses on the incredible diversity of terpenoids in plants and their potential to enhance bioproducts. Can you provide some insight into what terpenoids are and why they're so valuable for applications in medicine, industry, and even other fields?

Yes, happy to. Terpenoids actually happen to be one of the, I, I, you know, I'd like to go out on a limb and say it's the most diverse class of metabolites in nature. They're important and they're fascinating to me as a study system because they're actually abundant in all kingdoms of life. All organisms make terpenes. They're extremely diverse in their chemistry and their functions. In plants particularly, they make probably the largest diversity of terpenoids. In plants, they function as hormones, so they're critical for plant growth and development, and plants extensively use them to communicate with their environment. Anything from defenses against diseases and insects to attracting pollinators has contributions of terpenes to that. So they're incredibly important for plants to survive and to thrive in their ecological niche. For me, very beautiful is that biological importance interfaces with human uses. As important as they are in nature, terpenoids also are really in our everyday life. They're important byproducts in various sectors: cosmetics, fragrances, biofuels, therapeutics, you name it. Maybe to just give a few examples, right? Your toothpaste in the morning, that sort of minty fresh taste, that's menthol. That's a monoterpene, right? The Your perfume, all the sort of fruity, citrusy smells, a lot of those are terpenes. Therapeutics, a lot of our current single drugs are terpene-derived. And so the list kind of goes on. And I think why I work on these, why I've been working on these for so long, is this really important interface of this metabolite class that's important in nature. We barely understand how important it really is and how it functions. And what we could do with it.

Yeah, the big place we ran into it was in flavors and aromas, right? Like a lot of the flavors in strawberries come through— important ones like linalool come through sesquiterpenes. But let me be the devil's advocate in this, in that instead of trying to engineer plants to make more, why not just grow more plants and improve purification methods so that we could just capture what's naturally there more efficiently?

I think it's actually a really important point because I think one thing I would want to stress is that synthetic biology It's not meant to replace those more traditional approaches. I think there are cases where we have plants that can be cultivated that make important plant natural products. And those actually, if you think about it, can be really important for farmers to diversify their portfolio, especially in times where yield losses are apparent, where they have other economic challenges. I think there's actually great opportunity to tap into that. I think where synthetic biology really can be extremely helpful is to expand our access to natural products that are produced only in very small quantities, in plants that cannot be cultivated at scale, in plants that are maybe rare or endangered and where we need to protect that biodiversity. And likewise, products that we cannot easily access with chemical synthesis. And I think synthetic biology is not there, in my view, to replace that. I think it's there to complement it. And I think that's its amazing advantage that we can utilize.

I remember years ago learning about compounds like vinblastine and vincristine. So compounds that are critical for different types of therapeutics for cancers that are present in Tiny, tiny little amounts that you, that they would grow acres and acres of periwinkle and harvest them just to get a few milligrams of the final compound. And is that really where this kind of synthetic biology approaches may really accelerate the ability to produce those rare compounds?

Yes, I think that's exactly where it is, right? If you think about periwinkle as a plant, you can grow it, but it's extremely hard. It's extremely hard to modify. As you mentioned, these compounds are there in very small amounts, in very complex So purifying it for drug use from those plants is not only complicated, it's expensive. And that, right, those costs will be directly laid over to the patients. Taxol would be another example, right? It's produced in the bark and the needles of a conifer tree, the yew tree. Many of those species are actually now endangered because we have exploited them for making this drug. Nowadays, Taxol is produced in needle cell cultures at scale.

But if you think about if we can use the enzymes and pathways that yew trees are using to make Taxol, and we can engineer that in, say, a microbe that you can use, right, established fermentation processes, there is a way to sustainably make a drug more cost-effectively, right? Which is super beneficial if you think about the increasing need, especially of chemotherapeutic drugs like vincristine and Taxol. That goes right into my next question. So how do researchers identify which plant species or strains are the most promising for these biosynthetic pathway discoveries, and what omics tools can help accelerate this process?

It's a really good question because in many cases, right, so when I look at my own research, we go back to the old literature. We go back to and talk to people who have knowledge of traditional medicines. Who work with these plants. And you start there, and you start there, really deep literature reviews trying to understand where are there compounds that could have relevant bioactivities. That's one approach. The other approach that people use is sort of broad chemical screening, right? That's very common in the drug industry, but you can do the same from plants where you simply screen large amounts of chemicals and see what has a desired bioactivity and then try to follow up on where is it produced. So you can go both ways, sort of big-scale screening versus deep literature review to find plants of interest, and then start to really screen those, analyze those to see if there is potential. I think for that part, like how can omics technologies help? I think omics technologies have made it possible to even think about this, right? So the way we go about it in the lab, and that holds true for many labs in this field, is We obtain these plants where we can. We do a full metabolite profiling using metabolomics. We do a full transcript profiling, and that allows us to then not only understand where in the plant are these compounds made or accumulate, to what extent, but also then it allows us to say, okay, this compound is only abundant in the root. So we look for genes and enzymes in the roots that will allow us to actually now follow up and try to identify the underlying genes because that knowledge is critical. If you want to do synthetic biology, you need to know the genes. And so omics is absolutely critical and the advances in it and them becoming increasingly cheaper has incredibly helped push this field.

Well, what about the idea of taking things out of plants? So you have plants which have, you know, they produce some sort of compound but have some limitations because of Either substrate availability or whatever. How useful is it and what are the limitations of moving it in the microbes, either finding a bacterial or fungal host that can do the same job with the same genes, only produce compounds better in a fermenter than they can in a plant growing in soil?

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's sort of like hurdle number 2. Hurdle number 1 is find the genes, the enzymes, and the pathways. Hurdle number 2 is exactly what you say is how do you now make it at scale in another It is doable, and we have many examples where people have successfully moved entire pathways of multiple enzymes from a plant into, for example, bacteria like E. coli or into yeast systems. Nowadays, tobacco variety Nicotiana benthamiana is very popular to actually move it from a plant into a plant system that is more easily scalable. The advantages are that you can scale it, and that's a big issue, right? If you are targeting a natural product within a plant there, you know, it is not cultivatable at scale. That's the next step. The hurdles are you are moving it from its natural environment into a heterologous environment. That means all the fine-tuned regulatory components that you have in the natural producer suddenly are not there anymore. And that actually is one of the major hurdles in pathway engineering is that you often see, yes, all my genes are there, but I still don't get any product because the organism is quite capable of not wanting to do this. And so the understanding of regulation and overcoming these regulatory hurdles is, is the biggest hurdle in moving to scale.

When talking about these hurdles, are there advances in technology now that are working towards overcoming them?

Yes, absolutely. At multiple, from multiple perspectives, right? There are approaches where a lot of genome engineering is happening, where people re-engineer entire chromosomes to adapt them to productivity of an artificial pathway. Omics technologies, again, can be extremely helpful in this where you engineer the pathway and then use multi-omics approaches to understand Where are the regulatory hurdles? Where do I have inhibition of the pathway? Do I have side products that are undesired? And with that knowledge, then you can use to re-engineer your host organism to bypass those issues. So there's a lot of these combined approaches happening, everything from engineering the proteins to be more efficient, more stable, removing undesired side products, increasing specificity, all the way to actually engineering the host organism. To be more amenable to this new pathway are happening and they're advancing at—

That's a good place to take a break. We're speaking with Dr. Philipp Zerbe and with our co-host Julia Ball. He's a professor at the University of California, Davis. This is the Talking Biotech Podcast by Collabora, and we'll be back to you in just a moment. And now we're back on Collabora's Talking Biotech Podcast. We're speaking with Dr. Philipp Zerbe. He's a professor at the University of California, Davis. Department of Biology, and our co-host Julia Ball, who is an undergraduate student, a senior who is at the University of Florida and someone who survived my molecular biology class. So that's pretty cool. We're talking about using synthetic biology to generate important natural products that kind of combines 2 very seemingly disparate areas of having natural products that you're producing synthetically. You know, it seems like you are Seems like 2 ideas that are 2 separate spheres in the Venn diagram, yet do have some very nice overlap. So could you give us an example right off the bat of what is a real success story of this? Where has somebody done something that has generated a beautiful example of a natural product that has been developed through manipulation of the organism's gene expression to create it?

Yeah, I think the example I would choose is probably one that many people have chosen, but I think it's very timely because we had a major breakthrough in this last year, and that's the production of Taxol, so the chemotherapeutic drug that originally was identified in yew trees. And so just last year, several groups in the US, in Europe, and in China actually had major breakthroughs in understanding the enzymatic pathway on how this product is made. For some very brief background, Taxol was identified in the early '60s. So it's been decades of work, and many, many groups across the globe have tried to understand how does this tree make it. It was always predicted to be about 19 enzymes to actually make this very complex compound. And so in these recent breakthroughs that were published last year, several groups have used omics technologies, chemical synthesis of substrates, and integrated that with synthetic biology using this Nicotiana benthamiana platform as a host system. And they were able to now produce a critical precursor to Taxol called baccatin-3, but also actually Taxol itself for the first time using a minimal pathway of, I think, 10 to 12 enzymes. And since last year, we're now able to use pathway engineering, synthetic biology to make Taxol. So far, this has been at analytical scales, but I think in the next few years we'll see major advances in the production of Taxol. So I think Seeing how long it has been from the '60s when we learned about Taxol to now, 60 years later, more than 60 years later, we have identified this shows you sort of the scientific advances in the field. And my hope is that it will open new avenues for making these type of drugs more cost-effectively.

Yeah. Do you have any sense of how that relates to, like, let's say scale, meaning You know, for every bit we can do in the laboratory would be 1,000 acres of yew trees. Or, I mean, do you have, is there any sense of how the laboratory side has enabled the concentration of this or potentially lowering costs for consumers for a therapeutic?

Yeah, I don't remember the exact numbers, but I remember early on reading that, right, a dose of Taxol for clinical use is something around 1 tree. And you can roughly extrapolate on how many cancer patients we have and who require this drug. So the production levels for the engineered pathway are at the milligram range, low gram range. This is not industrial scale yet. But with established fermentation procedures in place, I would foresee that in the next 2 years, we are probably close to industrial scales.

What kind of barriers exist when it comes to bringing novel compounds that have potentially life-saving properties like Taxol to the market?

Yeah, there, there are many. The scientific ones we touched on a little bit. You have to identify the genes. You have to overcome biological regulatory hurdles in engineering an efficient enough pathway, among other scientific hurdles, to actually make the system productive. Purifying the compound is another scientific hurdle. Hurdle, right? You have to find a way to purify the compound cost-effectively and using non-toxic approaches as much as you can. There's that. The bigger hurdle, right, coming from being able to produce a compound to it actually reaching market, that's somewhat outside my expertise. I do live in my little academic bubble there, but, right, like bringing these compounds to market, that obviously requires extensive testing. Extensive clinical trials, extensive regulatory review through the FDA and other agencies, depending on what the natural product is. And that requires a lot of time. It is very expensive. And those can be significant hurdles to come from a natural product all the way to something that's actually sold as a drug.

With synthetic biology making strides in plant bios—

sorry.

With synthetic biology making strides in plant product biosynthesis, what kind of plant-based natural products can we expect to see more of in everyday consumer products like cosmetics or cleaning agents?

Good question. I think we can see a whole range of different products. If I focus in on the terpenes alone, what we mentioned, the fragrance industry, there's a great interest in accessing fragrance ingredients that are rare or unsustainable to extract from natural resources or that require extensive chemical synthesis. So I think there is a great interest. My lab worked for some time on, for example, cis-avionol, which is a precursor to Ambroxan, which is a base note for fragrances. Pharmaceuticals, absolutely. We have explored maybe 1% of the plant kingdom. I think we understand the potential that is out there in plants to find new advanced treatments and drugs. I could see certainly new pharmaceuticals coming through this pipeline being accessible through synthetic biology. You can think about biofuels, and a lot of terpenes are hydrocarbons. They burn. And so there's a lot of work, for example, at UC Berkeley and the Joint BioEnergy Institute for jet fuels, for example, sustainable production of jet fuels. And it can reach all the way to, for example, natural rubbers. There is work going on that is trying to engineer the pathway to natural rubber to avoid exploitation of dwindling natural resources. So the list of possible products is exciting and it is long.

All these are really cool new technologies, but do you think that the current intellectual property environment is really equipped to handle the complexities of this? Because this is all new stuff, like we saw with CRISPR-Cas. You know, nobody knows who owns it, you know, that kind of thing. Are we seeing the same thing happening in synthetic biology?

I think it is extremely complex. And I think it really depends on the type of product that will be patented, will be under IP. I could see that for therapeutics, other type of related natural products, that the procedures for IP can be adapted from pharmaceuticals that are made microbially or through chemical synthesis. So I think there is probably enough precedence for that. I think it's Much more complicated when we endeavor into engineered organisms, plants, right? Where we are reaching the realm of plant patents and food and agriculture, where there are different rules and regulations where we have to see how has this to be regulated, right? It intersects then with consumer preferences and consumer concerns. So this is, I think, is extremely complex where I think we are certainly in danger of falling behind the technology development. I think one aspect when we think about plant-derived therapeutics is who owns the IP. I think that is something that very much is an urgent need to understand and figure out, right? Is it the labs and the companies that develop the synthetic pathway? Is it the peoples of the countries and regions where these plants grow? Is it the peoples who developed the traditional knowledge of their bioactivities? How do we protect the entities that are involved in this? I think the Nagoya Protocol is sort of a first big step in that direction to protect biodiversity and protect germplasm and genetic resources. But it doesn't extend to knowledge in that sense. And I think that is something that people are very aware of, but I don't think we are, we have arrived yet at, at really an established way how to appropriately allocate IP rights to all the different people who have contributed to the discoveries.

We've touched on how these products made from bioengineering techniques could be used in the consumer field and in the market. But how do you think consumer perceptions of bioengineered plant-based products change depending on their intended use, such as food versus medicine?

I think it's extremely complex. My lab does work in the discovery of pathways toward therapeutics. We also do work in aroma metabolism in fruits. And even in our interactions as scientists with the growers and with the consumers, It is apparent that there is an enormous diversity of opinion. There's so much opinion that so rapidly spreads through social media that the problem is very complex. People are, I think, generally more accepting of chemical synthesis, synthetic biology, microbial engineering when it comes to therapeutics. I think we maybe understandably so have a lower threshold To where our medicines come from because we have to take them. Maybe when it comes to our food, I think it's a whole different matter, a matter of choice, a matter of uncertainty where I think there, there's a long way to go to really have a consensus between growers, scientists, consumers of what are the tools, what are the approaches that we find mutually agreeable and how we want to produce our food. I think that very much needs a lot of discussion and a lot of work.

Yeah, that's something that we've noticed for a long time, that when you're talking about food, you're invading on kind of cultural and social norms that people can have food choice, whereas medicine, you're talking about hope for a cure. And one of those you kind of intellectualize, if, you know, one of them's in the system 1, Dan Kahneman, you know, cerebral cortex. The other one is, uh, kind of food is hitting the reptile brain, right? First level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So the way in which people perceive genetic changes to either food or medicinal are very, very much at odds. But how much do you think that we as scientists, and I know you got a lot of folks at UC Davis who do this very well, but how much responsibility is it on scientists to really take a lead in explaining this to the public?

I think our role is critical. I think our role is critical to really describe what we are doing. What is the intention? What is the approach? What are the outcomes? What are the risks in our experience? I think we, we must bring that to the consumers. And I think importantly so, we must bring it to them through the media that they use, right? That, that to me is something I would say, right? We as scientists, I don't like to say failed, but maybe have overlooked for too long, is that our outlets of communicating this knowledge are publications, professional presentations, and so forth, all of which are important. But we have overlooked discussing it with the public where the public is reading it. And I think that's your generation, Julia, maybe that is much better at that. And it's, in my view, urgently needed that we do this because I think that is rebuilding trust. It is rebuilding understanding and can really, I think, help consumers to make the best choices for themselves.

It's interesting that you touched on my generation of scientists and even my generation of just all of us people in society. I think we share a special opportunity with each other to communicate through social media and other means through the internet that in previous generations there was not an opportunity to communicate so broadly across the world and share so many ideas with each other. And so I think just by the nature of the internet and social media, Our generation has developed this skill that maybe many others don't have or haven't developed in the past, which is to communicate each other's thoughts and opinions, sometimes in very interesting ways to each other through that medium.

Yeah. The big problem is, is that it's a, it's hard to make a TikTok video that says Taxol might save your butt if we make it in a microbe versus Uh, you know, your seed oils are going to kill you again, you know, that whole thing.

It's required, right? That's almost what's required. And then don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say, right, I'm putting it on your generation's shoulder. I'm just thinking if I look at myself and I look at my students, that my students are so much more open to it, so much more adaptive to it. And that's my own failure that I'm not more adaptive to those technologies. And, but I think in general, us as a scientific community needs to do this actively and constantly and really engage.

Yeah, but you know, the other part of this is that in your generation of scientists and, you know, my generation of scientists, we never got a gold star for doing it. In fact, we were discouraged from wasting our time talking to those people about this stuff because it doesn't matter. The science will rule the day and the publications will. And we've realized that that doesn't work.

Absolutely. I have those words very much ringing in my ears, but it has to change. And I think we see this more than ever before, how important it is. I'm a student looking at graduate school.

and eventually a career in these areas. I'm wondering what kind of training would you recommend for an undergraduate or even a high school student that is considering a career in synthetic biology or natural products chemistry?

I think there are a few things you, you can do. I think the one that I always recommend first and the most is get exposure. Use opportunities for fellowships, internships, workshops, any opportunities that allow you to get hands-on experience in what the work is actually like. Because to me, the reality is it's one thing to be fascinated about something from a course. That's great. But actually experiencing doing the work is another thing. And I think as a student, you can learn a lot about what you're passionate about and what maybe not so much. Maybe some of you are passionate about an idea, but the actual work maybe is not so much your thing. And one thing that drives all of us to end up in a career in science is that passion for that science. And I always want my students to find that thing that they're passionate about. I think exposure is the one thing that maybe matters the most, as much as you can. One thing that everybody recommends, and because it is true, is networking, right? It's talking to people in these fields, to different people, not just as a graduate student to your professors. But to people in industry, people in nonprofits, people in government, wherever they are, to really get an understanding, what is your perspective on this? I think that's really important. And it's another generational shift, I would argue, that me as a professor, it is my task to provide that, at least the opportunity, right? It's actually not enough anymore that I have a graduate student in my lab and say, this is your project. Finish it, publish it, and you'll be fine. It just doesn't really hold true anymore. My job is to understand from you, where do you want to be? What are your thoughts? And it can be different things. And then to work with you on thinking, okay, outside and complementary to your actual thesis project, what are the trainings? What are the professional development options that are important for you to not just make the decision where you want to be, but to actually be competitive for it? And that includes Communication and outreach. It includes teaching. It can include entrepreneurship. All these components that are actually more and more expected of you as a PhD student when you finish. That was different for me, right? For me, it was still fine. You publish, you're good. It has changed. And I think that's an important component that you as a student, to understand you have the right to ask your mentor for those opportunities. You have to apply for them. But you have the right to them, and you should be proactive in talking to your mentors about it.

Well, thank you very much, Philipp. This was really a really nice discussion. I appreciate it very much. If people wanted to learn more about your program or maybe follow on social media, if you're there, where would they look?

Yeah, my website, my lab website. So if people just Google my name, Philipp Zerbe at UC Davis, you'll find it. I'm also on LinkedIn. So that's another opportunity, more or less regularly posting updates from the lab. So those are probably good spots. And I'm always happy for people to email me, reach out if they have questions. Absolutely.

That's very good. And it's, it's P-H-I-L, one L, and then I-2-Ps.

Correct.

Yes. Almost like Mississippi. And then, and then, and Zerbe, Z-E-R-B-E. So those are the ways that you would find him online. So thank you very much for joining us. Julia, thank you for joining us. I really appreciate it. I hope you do it again.

Yeah, thank you so much to you, Dr. Folta, and to you, Dr. Hervé, for joining me in this conversation. It was really awesome.

And thank the both of you for having me and giving me the opportunity to share some of my perspective. And yeah, thank you very much indeed.

And for all those listening, thank you very much for listening to another episode of the Talking Biotech podcast. There are a billion podcasts nowadays. There used to only be a handful back when we started in 2015. So lots of things people can listen to. And so we need your help in helping them find us. So many times I find somebody who says, I can't believe I just found this podcast and now I have 450 episodes to go through. Share on your social media if you don't mind, and write a review on iTunes, Spotify, or the place where you consume podcast media. It's really important because as we go forward and use new innovations like synthetic biology to generate the therapeutics and other compounds that make the human experience better, they will move innovations like that to application better if people understand what they are. And that's our responsibility to get them there. So this is the Talking Biotech podcast by Collabra, and we'll talk to you again next week.