I was lucky enough to attend this year's Ginkgo Ferment Summit at the end of October 2021. Because of the pandemic, this was the first time in two years that Ginkgo Bioworks held the event. Here are a few learnings.

We are at the end of the beginning for synthetic biology. CEO Jason Kelly noted that his Ginkgo Bioworks co-founder, Tom Knight, wrote a piece on cellular computing 25 years ago. DARPA and Stanford professor Drew Endy wrote about biosecurity in 2003. Today, we’re seeing synthetic biology-produced products are on the market.
Programming life requires the utmost humility. Given how quickly we’re moving with our ability to engineer life, it makes sense that we pause to examine what we’re doing. Building with biology is the ultimate skillset and should be approached with reverence.
Engineering organisms is getting cheaper. And faster. Kelly pointed out that Ginkgo’s biofoundry can do 3x more work per year. He has seen exponential improvements in costs and time. This is exciting.
We’re lucky to have a COVID-19 vaccine. Ginkgo's Renee Wegrzyn, ex-FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, ex-BARDA director Rick Bright, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Chemical and Biological Defense Programs at United States Department of Defense, Brandi Vann, told us the industry placed bets across multiple technologies because traditional approaches would not have worked. Luckily, we have a four-decade investment in biotech and two decades investment in a universal influenza vaccine.
Entrepreneurs help us move faster. Dr. Vann suggested that bio-entrepreneurs can help us reach more people faster. Early detection will allow for better mitigation. (I believe we’re watching this play out in real-time with the Omicron variant.)

The consumer space will be transformed by biotechnology. Several entrepreneurs showed us how they’re using the Ginkgo biofoundry platform. I particularly enjoyed Jasmina Aganovic’s presentation. Her new company Arcaea is transforming the personal care ingredients supply chain.

Motif Foodworks vegan meatballs. Delicious!

Cell Development Kits will make biology easier to engineer. I found this incredibly exciting as it opens a new and smart way for small companies to leverage a bigger company’s knowledge to get their organism producing a product faster.

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