Dreaming in Biology: Tales from the Ginkgo Bioworks Studio.
Cas Smith is the Director of Creative Marketing at Ginkgo Bioworks. He helps to make synthetic biology accessible to more people in a variety of industries. In this episode, Cas shares with Erum and Karl how synthetic biology is already making an impact on our world and also how Ginkgo plans to expand that footprint by informing and engaging other industries like pharmaceuticals and government. Cas also covers different ways that synthetic biology can help various sectors as well as what problem he’d tackle first if he was starting a synthetic biology startup.
Click here to read the episode transcript.
Topics Covered
00:00 - Introduction
00:58 - The background and history of Ginkgo
03:45 - What “Grow Everything” means to Cas Smith
04:48 - Helping everyday people understand the power of synthetic biology
07:49 - Relating synthetic biology to the pharmaceutical industry
11:17 - The challenges Ginkgo faces communicating to a broad audience.
13:03 - The types of companies that synthetic biology can benefit
16:50 - How self-programming uses genes to produce specific proteins, enzymes, or molecules
18:25 - How biobricks are used to assemble larger “circuits” that perform a specific function
19:17 - The different teams and functions within Ginkgo
23:39 - Why Cas is excited about exposing new people to the potential of synthetic biology
28:57 - The reason young people and kids are important to the adoption and evolution of synthetic biology
31:50 - The different companies that Ginkgo supports
