News Digest #209 – Meet Joyn Bio from Ginkgo & Bayer, vegan pets, and Feng Zhang’s CRISPR newco (sponsored by Riffyn)

Hi all%,This SynBioBeta digest features the first article in a series about digital biology brought to you by Riffyn. Did you know that researchers spend as much as 80% of their time cleaning up and organizing data, instead of analyzing and learning from it? Riffyn has developed a cloud-based solution that structures and links your experiments and data in ways that enable your teams to apply machine learning and analyze your results in real time. Riffyn and AWS are running a workshop as part of Synthetic Biology Week, and Tim is giving the keynote at this year’s SynBioBeta.Bayer and Ginkgo Bioworks announced the name of its joint venture, Joyn Bio. The company will bring advanced techniques in synthetic biology to agriculture, starting with reducing the environmental impact of nitrogen fertilizer. Pivot Bio announced the pre-commercial launch of nitrogen-producing microbes to improve crop nutrition and yields.

Can dogs and cats be vegan? Vegan Mafia Boss Ryan Bethencourt and henchman Ron Shigeta think so: They just launched Wild Earth with $4 million in seed funding. The company will be bringing alternative protein for dogs and cats to the market. Watch them eat their own dog food live at SynBioBeta 2018!

In other news, Arbor Biotechnologies, co-founded by MIT’s Feng Zhang, unveiled a new CRISPR tool for manipulating RNA and announced a $15.6 million Series A financing. Another company co-founded by Feng, Pairwise, raised a $25M Series A round led by Monsanto Growth Ventures to accelerate innovation in agriculture with gene editing, along with an R&D collaboration with Monsanto.

Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute and MIT.I was at Y Combinator’s Demo Day this week for an amazing glimpse of the future, from 3D printed houses to cloud bioreactors. Will Patrick from Culture Robotics will join us at SynBioBeta 2018 and talk about the latest cloud lab, this time for fermentation.

John along with Matt Ball and Will Patrick of Culture Robotics at Y Combinator’s Demo Day.

Enjoy the rest of the week.Regards,John

Be your own data scientist -- it's easier than you think

If you have assumed that data science is only for data scientists, then you're probably missing some important discoveries.

DuPont’s Microbiome Venture Announces Second Strategic Partnership

Partnership with the Center of Food and Fermentation Technologies Will Focus on ‘Next-Generation’ Probiotics

Living Ink Technologies awarded Grant to develop Algae Ink™

This grant will support research to develop algae that are colored cyan, magenta and yellow for biobased pigments.

Cargill officially starts producing its next-generation sweetener EverSweet

As the focus on healthier lifestyle intensifies, EverSweet offers a new choice for reduced and zero-calorie food and beverages.

DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products Expanding Bio-based Propanediol Production in Tennessee

Engineering and construction is scheduled to start immediately and the expansion is expected to be complete mid-2019.

Key Milestone reached in the Audi – Global Bioenergies partnership

Global Bioenergies delivers a batch of 60 litres of high-purity renewable isobutene-derived gasoline to Audi.

Who's Hiring?

Senior/Staff Computational Scientist, Bioinformatics: Inscripta, Boulder, COSr. Scientist, Applications: Inscripta, Boulder, COSynthetic biologist/Protein engineer: XENO Cell Innovations, Pilsen, Czech RepublicDirector of Humane Design: Center for Humane Technology, San Francisco CADirector of Research: Center for Humane Technology, San Francisco CATo feature your job here, please get in touch

All the News

Golden Rice approved for sale to Canada but no plans for imports (Genetic Literacy Project)This Scientist Turned CEO Wants to Gene-Edit a Way to Cure Cancer (Ozy)Advances in DNA Data Storage: Random Access Memory (Twist Bioscience)Save the date for SynbiCITE's first Synthetic Biology Industrial Translation Showcase: June 5th, 2018 (Announcement)Doggybone™ DNA has been named as one of five innovative technologies for health in Chemistry World's 'Technology for Health' special collection (Touchlight Genetics)U.S. EPA awards $600,000 to help two California small businesses develop environmental technologies (Press Release)Autolus to support UK network of Advanced Therapies Treatment Centres (Press Release)Sustainable protein: the 21st century global challenge (3f bio)Book review: ‘A Crack in Creation.’ Jennifer Doudna’s journey of discovery (PLOS Synbio)Announcing DIYbiosphere: an open source project to connect DIYbio related activities worldwideIf you’ve got news to share, please drop me a note.

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