Genomatica and the new road to bioeconomy innovation

The new bioeconomy survivors

So Genomatica changed, Schilling explained. Not how they worked, but how they aimed. Now, they’re looking for molecules like BG, where there is an existing, established market that a young company, that has to move quickly, can work with. And where it is not just about making the same molecule at the same market price, only renewably. Because, what do you do when the oil price drops from $70 to $20 in a few months? Either the reality of that, or even just the fear that this might happen, makes corporate licensees tough to find, slow to bring along. Not every company is as forward thinking and pioneering as a Novamont, or has the combination of heft, vision and patience of a BASF.

How many molecules are out there that fit category three — where a novel process upends the traditional petroleum-based economics of an established molecule. Where there can be an order of magnitude of improvement in production efficiency that will provide plenty of incentive for the developer and plenty of incentive for the customer, and insulation against the rollercoaster of commodity prices?

The Ginkgo Connection

That’s in some ways where Ginkgo BioWorks comes in. If you’re a devotee of reading board of directors pages, you’ll note that Genomatica’s board has been reduced to three and two of them are Genomatica CEO Christophe Schilling and Ginkgo BioWorks CEO Jason Kelly. Ginkgo made a strategic investment also in Genomatica not long ago, at a critical point in the company’s fortunes, when fresh capital was needed to sustain the company’s development and there was none affordably to find in a world then awash in cheap oil.

In some ways, Ginkgo needs a company like Genomatica to exist and Genomatica needs a Ginkgo. One develops the organisms that make important chemicals and materials, and the other develops the process technology that converts a promising organism into a sustainable, affordable, reliable, available alternative to a petroleum-based chemical or material. 

Over at Planet Ginkgo

That’s SARA – the most important acronym of all in the advanced bioeconomy, for it sums up everything that a molecule has to be. And in some ways, everything a company has to be.

But we passed the point where companies have to build every single thing in their own house. Pioneering companies like Sapphire Energy and Solazyme were incredibly expensive ventures precisely because they had practically to invent the entire science of — in this case algae — advanced organism development, in their own shop. Strain characterization was in its infancy, strain development almost unheard of, not to mention the process technology, crop defense, application development, regulatory compliance, field testing, certification, plant design, farm construction, and so on and so on.

Now, there are a lot of partners to help, and companies do a lot more specializing than they did in the past. Need a process technology? There’s Genomatica. Need an organism? There’s the likes of Ginkgo or Zymergen. Need enzyme design or metabolic engineering? Try Arzeda. Need DNA? Try Twist. Need to read DNA? Try Illumina. Need to write it? Think Inscripta. Need a pilot facility? Try ABPDU or a host of others.