Episode 58: Biotechnology and Sustainability with John Melo and Beth Bannerman (Amyris)

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Episode Intro Notes

What We Will Cover

• What is biotechnology?

• Why is biotech important?

• What are current applications of biotech and how can it advance sustainability?

• Are there any potential ramifications of pursuing biotech solutions?

• How can listeners learn more about biotechnology?

• Background on Amyris and our upcoming guests

What is biotechnology?

• Well, at its simplest (and as the name implies), biotechnology is technology based on biology. Biotechnology harnesses cellular and biomolecular processes to develop technologies and products that help improve our lives and the health of our planet. 

• Agriculturalist Karl Ereky coined the term “biotechnology” back in 1919, where he described it as “all lines of work by which products are produced from raw materials with the aid of living things.”

• One approach in modern biotechnology is modifying DNA and proteins to shape the capabilities of living cells, plants, and animals into something useful for humans. Biotechnologists do this by sequencing, or reading, the DNA found in nature, and then manipulating it in a laboratory setting.

• But in general, biotechnology today is an applied science that utilizes living organisms and their derivatives in order to produce products and processes.

why is biotech important?

• We don’t want to sound too hyperbolic here, but biotechnology has shaped human civilization as we know it - in fact, biotechnology is nearly as old as humanity itself. The food you eat and the pets you love? You can thank our distant ancestors for kickstarting the agricultural revolution, using artificial selection for crops, livestock, and other domesticated animals. 

• Biotech provides a way for us to utilize nature’s manufacturing system to make the ingredients that go into any and all of our daily products. Replacing certain ingredients that are scarce or have a significant environmental impact in their production with ones derived with biotechnology could have a significant impact. We are putting too big of a strain on our planet today. 

  • Consider how Earth Overshoot Day, the day that marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services exceeds what the Earth can regenerate in a year was August 20 last year. Biotech provides a potential avenue to produce the products we need with inputs that put less strain on the Earth. 

• Since these biotech substitutes could take off in use, there is a large biotech market today, and it’s expected to grow in the future.

  • Today, the total market size (as measured by revenue) of biotech in 2020 is over $100 billion. 

  • Looking to the future, the global biotech market is expected to reach $775 billion by 2025. 

What are Current Applications of Biotech and how do they advance sustainability?

• We’re going to categorize these applications and highlight their connections to sustainability within three big buckets: human health, food, and fuel.

• Let’s start with Human Health.

  • The Future of Life Institute notes that biotechnology is present in our lives before we’re even born, from fertility assistance to prenatal screening to the home pregnancy test. It follows us through childhood, with immunizations and antibiotics, both of which have drastically improved life expectancy. 

  • Biotechnology is a key driver behind disease vaccines. Bio-tech powered vaccines  have eliminated small pox, polio and other deadly diseases, and they even have the potential to eradicate non-communicable diseases like cancer.

  • Another example under biotech, sustainability, and human health is squalene. What is squalene, you ask? Aside from being a fun word to say, squalene is an oily compound found in shark livers that has been shown to boost the effectiveness of vaccines. As you can imagine, this is a big draw to many pharmaceutical companies, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

  • But, we can’t harvest squalene from sharks at the rate we need and scale the pharma industry without further endangering the species. 

    • Between 63 million and 273 million sharks die at the hands of humans each year, and liver oil is harvested from at least a couple million of them. 

  • And here comes biotech with a potential way to get the immunity benefit without needing to harm sharks in the process. Amyris is using its biotech platform to develop squalene that doesn’t require a single shark. Currently, the company can produce enough squalene to produce 1 billion vaccines in only a month.

• Alright, so that was our first bucket, human health. Let’s now take a look at biotech’s connection to food.

  • The majority of the food we eat comes from engineered plants. These plants are modified – either via modern technology or by more traditional artificial selection – to grow without pesticides, to require fewer nutrients, or to withstand the rapidly changing climate.

  • Because crops can be modified faster through biotechnology than by conventional agriculture, biotechnology can hasten the implementation of strategies to meet food challenges as they relate to rapid and severe climatic changes. Pest and disease resistant biotech crops have been continuously improved as new pests and diseases emerge with changes in climate.

  • Additionally, biotech crops allow farmers to practice soil carbon sequestration. For example, herbicide-tolerant soybean and canola crops facilitate zero or no-till farming practices. These practices significantly reduce the loss of soil carbon (and therefore carbon stays sequestered in the soil - see Episode 47) and reduces CO2 emissions, fuel use, and soil erosion.

    • Other applications of agricultural biotech as they relate to climate change include salinity-tolerant crops, drought-resistant crops, and crops with bolstered cold and heat stress tolerance.

• Our third and final bucket of biotech & sustainability is biotech’s applications to energy and fuel, often called biofuels.

  • Let’s start with biomass. Biomass is renewable organic material that comes from plants and animals such as wood and agricultural crops. Biomass can be converted directly into liquid fuels, called "biofuels," to help meet transportation fuel needs. 

    • The two most common types of biofuels in use today are ethanol and biodiesel. Ethanol is most commonly derived from corn, sugar cane, and sugar beets, and biodiesel is produced from vegetable oils, yellow grease, used cooking oils, or animal fats.

      • These two food-based fuels represent the first generation of biofuel technology. This first generation is pretty substantial too. For example, in 2019, 10% of U.S. vehicle fuel consumption (by volume) was ethanol and over 98% of U.S. gasoline contains ethanol.

      • The second generation of biofuels are made from non-food resources. This is important since some argue that the footprint of producing this food for fuel isn’t worth it. The US Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office is collaborating with industry to develop next-generation biofuels made from cellulosic (meaning fibers from plant cells) and algae-based resources. 

    • Truly, biofuels could be a topic in and of itself, so don’t be surprised if we cover them in the future!

  • Party fact alert: other intriguing potential applications of biotech include Bomb-sniffing plants and helping facilitate the resurrection of the woolly mammoth. No joke.

complications with biotech

• Of course this is a big, complex topic that raises important questions. As the Biotechnology Innovation Organization puts it, “Biotechnology can provide useful tools for combating disease, hunger, climate change, and environmental contamination, but it should not be viewed as a panacea, as in that can solve all our problems.  For example, life-saving medicines may have serious side effects, and, while our expanding knowledge of genetics can help create the next generation of medicines, its potential for misuse requires ethical assessment.”

  • We’re only going to touch on environmental and societal implications of biotech without diving too deep into religious or spiritual ethics concerns, as these viewpoints are often very personal.

• One of the biggest complications when it comes to biotechnology is the idea of unforeseen effects. 

  • An example here is mosquito control. Scientists are exploring a biotech-powered strategy to control mosquito populations, since they’re known to be carriers of harmful and deadly pathogens and seem to play no productive role in the ecosystem. Their approach is to genetically alter and destroy disease-carrying species of mosquitoes.

  • Scientists who work on this approach - called the gene drive - have performed risk assessments and equipped them with safeguards to make the trials as safe as possible. But, since this man-made gene drive has never been tested in the wild, it’s impossible to know for certain the impact that a mosquito extinction could have on the environment. Additionally, there is a small possibility that the gene drive could mutate once released in the wild, spreading genes that researchers never planned for.

• The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications articulates two additional complications worth considering as well. 

  • The first is the idea of “General Welfare and Sustainability”, emphasizing that “While a technology can provide more food it should not be to the detriment of the environment or to human health or disrupt traditional behavioral systems…. As an environmental issue, questions raised have to do with concerns regarding environmental protection, sustainable use of biodiversity, economic growth and social equity.”

  • The second involves the distribution of benefits and burdens as a result of biotechnology. A central question here is whether the products produced by the technology will be able to provide for those who really need them and whether they will generate wealth for the society as a whole, as opposed to furthering global inequality.

• Another issue is that a company could own the beneficial technology and wield it to charge high prices or take advantage of people.

• There are also concerns that government regulators do not have a rigorous enough framework in place to test these new biotech-derived products and ensure their safety.

• On the whole though, we can say that the majority of the public is optimistic about the ability of biotechnology to improve our quality of life. Per Hofstra University, 79% of the public says that biotechnology has had a positive effect on the quality of healthcare and that biotechnology and related sciences have made life easier.

How can listeners learn more about biotechnology

• As you’ve probably put together, biotechnology is a huge field with a wide array of applications and sub-specialties. It’s therefore difficult to point to a single place to learn more on any given component of biotechnology. 

• We recommend starting with organizations that study biotech from a societal lens before diving into specific areas of focus. We like the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit organization that works to understand and mitigate existential influences impacting society. It does a nice job of introducing the field of biotechnology and its potential societal benefits and risks. It also links to a ton of resources from books and research papers to Ted Talks and other leading organizations. We’ll link to these in our show notes.

• ETC Group is another organization to check out. They work to address the socioeconomic and ecological issues surrounding new technologies that could have an impact on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. If you like the work they do, you can even donate to them directly.

about amyris and our upcoming guests

• Amyris is a biotech company based in Emeryville, California – the company is helping to realize a more sustainable future with its platform for converting sustainably sourced sugarcane into natural and pure ingredients. These ingredients are then used in biopharmaceutical drug discovery and production, cosmetics and skincare lines, health and wellness, flavors and fragrances, and more. Amyris owns six consumer-facing brands, It also partners with a number of companies across industries to help them make their formulations more sustainable.

• A few teasers on how Amyris is helping to bring new, sustainable products to market:

  • Amyris has a number of consumer-facing brands, some of which you might already be familiar with:

    • Biossance, a clean skincare line that you might see in your Instagram feed or on the shelves of your local Sephora

    • Pipette, a safe and sustainable line of skincare for babies and mothers

    • and Purecane, a no-calorie sweetener.

    • There are several other brands in the Amyris family, and a few new brands being launched this year, like the haircare brand that it’s developing with Jonathan Van Ness, but those are just a few that we’ll share with you for now.  

  • All of these brands and product lines are developed using Amyris’ proprietary biotech platform that uses fermentation – not petroleum-based manufacturing – to make these products.

• We’ll be speaking with two folks from Amyris, John Melo and Beth Bannerman.

  • John is the Director, President, and CEO of Amyris (talk about an impressive set of titles). He has 30 years of combined experience as an entrepreneur and thought leader in developing and growing technology companies. John has led Amyris through successful technology development, industrial start up, product development and commercialization. He was also at the helm during a number of funding rounds, including the initial public offering.

  • Beth is the Chief Engagement and Sustainability Officer at Amyris. Beth leads an integrated team to introduce the company’s first Environmental, Social, and Governance report, as part of the company’s commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.