Making biology easier to engineer

Synthetic biology is the key to sustainable biomanufacturing. At Ginkgo, our mission is to make biology easier to engineer so that customers can achieve the performance indicators that enable economically viable production of their targets. We bring together expert scientists, bespoke software, state-of-the-art instrumentation and automation to tackle pathway optimization through iterative DBTL cycles. At the core of every cell program are the enzymes that catalyze conversion of substrate to product. Ginkgo's end-to-end Enzyme Services can be applied to identify new enzymatic activities and improve enzyme specificity, activity and stability in industrially relevant conditions. In the Bioworks foundries, we assemble these enzymes into complex metabolic pathways, optimizing expression and flux. We use highly automated strain engineering tools and high-throughput analytical capabilities to test thousands of prototypes. We recently added automated adaptive evolution and encapsulation into nanoliter reactor technologies to augment the design space we are able to explore.

This talk will discuss Ginkgo's platform and provide some examples of projects and successes to date. I will also discuss my career trajectory and things I've learned as I transitioned from a career in academia to a career in industry, and from technical roles to my more recent operational and leadership role.

Cynthia Collins received her BS from the University of Toronto in Chemistry and Biochemistry and her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from Caltech in the Arnold lab where she focused on the directed evolution of transcription factors involved in microbial quorum sensing and their use in synthetic biology applications. Cynthia then moved to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, where her group applied synthetic biology and protein engineering approaches to engineer communication and collaboration in microbial communities. She earned a NSF Career Award and was named a World Economic Forum Young Scientist. Cynthia joined Ginkgo in 2021, where she led projects in her role as a Principal Organism Engineer. She is currently a Senior Director of Organism Engineering, and leads the Microbial Engineering Operational Excellence team.