AI Is Designing Life Now | MOONSHOTS
Ben is building Colossal as a comprehensive synthetic biology platform that starts with de-extinction technology but creates an end-to-end pipeline applicable to various biological products. The company has already spun out two biological product companies and views de-extinction as a way to solve fundamental biology problems while addressing the extinction crisis.
Summary
Ben's company Colossal is developing what he describes as a platform and engine for creating living products, with de-extinct animals as their first focus. The company is building an end-to-end pipeline for synthetic biology that encompasses multiple technologies including computational biology, cellular engineering, genetic engineering, cloning, and eventually artificial wombs. The strategic decision to start with de-extinction stems from the current massive extinction crisis and the recognition that solving de-extinction requires tackling some of biology's hardest problems, such as genotype to phenotype relationships, ancestral state reconstructions, and comparative genomics. By solving these fundamental challenges, Colossal is creating a system model that can be applied to diverse biological solutions. The platform's versatility has already been demonstrated through two spin-out companies: one focused on breaking plastic degradation and another biological products company. Ben emphasizes that the same technological system capable of bringing back a mammoth can also engineer microbes to break chemical bonds in plastics. While he acknowledges the technology could be applied to human healthcare, Colossal remains focused on biodiversity and de-extinction as their core mission, preferring to spin out or license applications in other areas. Ben believes their models and approach will have broader applications across synthetic biology in the coming years.
Key Insights
- Ben argues that starting with de-extinction forces the company to solve some of biology's hardest problems, which creates a robust foundation for other applications
- The speaker claims that the same technological system capable of bringing back extinct animals can also create microbes that break down plastic waste
- Ben believes that building an end-to-end synthetic biology pipeline requires developing capabilities across multiple disciplines from computational biology to artificial wombs
- The company has demonstrated the platform's versatility by successfully spinning out two different biological product companies from the same core technology
- Ben acknowledges their technology could apply to human healthcare but maintains the company stays myopically focused on biodiversity and de-extinction as their core mission
Topics
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