AI For Protein Design Fuels Collaboration Between Ginkgo And Cambrium

Cambrium, a leading German start-up focused on applying generative AI to protein design and synthesis, has successfully completed its collaboration with Ginkgo Bioworks, a company building the leading platform for cell programming and biosecurity. The partnership aims to enable the rapid and cost-effective design of high-performing, industrially relevant microbes for protein production.

Almost two years ago, Cambrium and Ginkgo’s Encapsulation and Screening team (formerly FGen) announced their collaboration to push the boundaries of data-driven metabolic engineering. Combining FGen’s expertise in microbial strain development and ultra-high-throughput screening (uHTS) techniques with Cambrium’s Cloud Protein AI platform, the collaboration screened many cells to optimize their protein production.

Through this collaboration, the teams were able to identify non-obvious engineering targets to improve strain performance significantly. In addition, by mapping experimental data to in silico models, they were able to generate strain optimization insights and faster convergence toward high-performance protein production. The collaboration also enabled the isolation of novel cell lines that produced enhanced levels of high-value proteins.

“Partnering with FGen, and then Ginkgo, was a natural move to generate an immense amount of data to feed our AI algorithms,” said Dr. Charlie Cotton, Chief Science Officer of Cambrium. “By leveraging our respective strengths, we gained valuable insights for strain engineering and product optimization.”

“Using our uHTS capabilities and nanoliter-reactor technology, we were able to generate a vast quantity of data linked to specific phenotypes to feed our machine learning workflows,” said Dr. Rocio Aguilar Suarez, Research Scientist at Ginkgo Bioworks. “By partnering with Cambrium, we optimized our workflows with artificial intelligence to advance strain engineering to the next stage.”

The successful collaboration between Cambrium and Ginkgo has resulted in more efficient and cost-effective biomanufacturing methods for companies and their partners. With these advances, the partnership has demonstrated the power of combining generative AI and high-throughput screening technologies to develop high-performing microbial strains rapidly.

Next month, Ginkgo Bioworks will sponsor several sessions at SynBioBeta 2023: The Global Synthetic Biology Conference. In addition, several sessions will also be centered around generative AI and its ongoing role in the synbio field. This event seeks to foster collaborations like the one described here between Canbrium and Ginkgo by providing the space and discussions that encourage synergy between companies that they often haven’t even considered.

I’m the founder of SynBioBeta and some of the companies I write about, including Ginkgo Bioworks, are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference and weekly digest.