Claim OwnershipThe Climate Biotech Podcast
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© 2025 The Climate Biotech Podcast
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Are you fascinated by the power and potential of biotechnology? Do you want to learn about cutting-edge innovations that can address climate change?
The Climate Biotech Podcast explores the most pressing problems at the intersection of climate and biology, and most importantly, how to solve them. Hosted by Dan Goodwin, a neuroscientist turned biotech enthusiast, the podcast features interviews with leading experts diving deep into topics like plant synthetic biology, mitochondrial engineering, gene editing, and more.
This podcast is powered by Homeworld Collective, a non-profit whose mission is to ignite the field of climate biotechnology.
27 Episodes
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Professor Pam Silver from Harvard Medical School joins us as a founding figure and legend in synthetic biology whose scientific path led from pioneering work on nuclear localization to co-developing the revolutionary "bionic leaf"—a system that combines artificial catalysts with bacteria to convert sunlight and CO2 into fuels and compounds at efficiencies far exceeding natural photosynthesis. Silver's perspective on synthetic biology's evolution from theoretical explorations to real-world app...
Sonja Salmon takes us on a fascinating journey through her 20-year quest to harness the power of enzymes and textiles to fight climate change. Her background in textile chemistry led to a deep understanding of natural polymers like cellulose and chitosan, which eventually connected to her fascination with enzymes during a 22-year career at the world's largest industrial enzyme company. The heart of Salmon's innovation lies in immobilizing carbonic anhydrase. This remarkably fast enzyme conve...
When Loren Looger walks into a room, he doesn't want recognition, he wants to make things that work. The creator of revolutionary, open-source tools that transformed how we visualize brain activity is increasingly turning his protein engineering expertise to formidable challenges in climate, including methane degradation. . Methane sits at the heart of our climate crisis as a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Yet nature has evolved only a few enzyme scapable of breakin...
What happens when a structural biochemist turns his attention to mountains of rock? Dr. Sasha Milshteyn takes us on a remarkable journey from studying tiny molecular movements in proteins to revolutionizing how we extract copper from massive mine heaps. The mining industry faces a critical challenge - we've depleted most easily-processed oxide copper ores, leaving behind harder-to-extract sulfides that typically yield just 30-50% recovery using conventional methods. This creates a significan...
Mining has essentially been the same for 5,000 years, just now with bigger shovels. Imagine if we could drastically increase mining efficiency and output for both the environment and national security. That's exactly what Dr. Esteban Gazel, a Costa Rican-born geochemist, and Dr. Buz Barstow, a physicist-turned-synthetic biologist, are working on at Cornell University. When these brilliant minds connected over rare earth elements and carbon storage, they realized that existing microorganisms ...
What if we could reinvent photosynthesis itself? GigaCrop founder and CEO Chris Eiben has a mission to dramatically increase crop yields by redesigning one of biology's most fundamental processes. With half of Earth's habitable land already dedicated to agriculture and growing demands for food, fiber, and materials, we face a critical choice: convert more natural landscapes to farmland or make existing farmland drastically more productive. The problem lies with Rubisco, the enzyme at the he...
The solution to plastic waste looks different depending on where you stand in the world. While Northern Hemisphere biotech approaches to plastic recycling focus on high-temperature enzymes designed to regenerate plastic monomers (which works when you produce lots of plastic), Cesar's lab has engineered a completely different solution. Starting with microorganisms from Antarctica, his team uses AI and deep learning to design enzymes that work efficiently at low temperatures - not to recycle pl...
What if we could secure critical supply chains through bioengineering? What if the vaccines protecting millions worldwide didn't require harvesting 10,000 trees annually from Chilean mountains? Maria Astolfi is tackling this exact challenge through groundbreaking work with P450 enzymes. Growing up surrounded by biodiversity shaped Maria's unique perspective on biotechnology. After co-founding the Amazon's first synthetic biology lab and working at Ginkgo Bioworks, she now conducts research i...
The global food system has a phosphorus problem that few people talk about. Unlike nitrogen, which cycles naturally through our atmosphere, phosphorus is mined from finite deposits and has no natural cycle. A massive 100-kilometer conveyor belt—visible from space—transports phosphate-rich rock from the Sahara Desert to ships waiting to distribute this critical resource worldwide. Any disruption to this supply chain would threaten global agriculture, yet when phosphorus runs off fields, it cre...
Imagine proteins engineered to seek out and bind toxic heavy metals, cleaning up contaminated sites and potentially treating metal poisoning in humans. In this episode, Duke University professor and entrepreneur Pranam Chatterjee shares how his has developed two impressive AI tools transforming this field: MetaLATTE, which predicts whether proteins will bind specific metals, and the upcoming MetaLORIAN, which generates custom peptides designed to target particular metals like cadmium, ...
Cryptocurrency and climate biotechnology might seem like an unusual pairing, but Albert Anis, founding steward of ValleyDAO, is showing this combination has remarkable potential. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are creating entirely new funding mechanisms for scientists working on our planet's most critical challenges. At the heart of ValleyDAO's approach is a radical rethinking of how intellectual property can be governed and commercialized. Through "IP NFTs" (non-fungible tok...
What if we could harness nature's most precise chemical tools and make them work in industrial settings? James Weltz, co-founder and CSO of Cascade Bio, reveals how enzyme immobilization technology is transforming chemical manufacturing by stabilizing delicate biological catalysts. From his childhood exploring chemical plants with his industrial hygienist father to his groundbreaking PhD research, Weltz shares the journey that led to Cascade Bio's revolutionary polymer brush technology. This...
What happens when brilliant scientific innovation meets masterful storytelling? Marketing rarely tops the priority list for scientists and biotech founders who are deep in the technical challenges of making their innovations work. Yet without effective communication, even groundbreaking discoveries risk languishing in obscurity, unable to attract the talent, funding, and partnerships necessary to scale their impact. In this illuminating conversation, Dan Goodwin welcomes marketing expe...
In our latest episode of the Climate Biotech Podcast, we explore where science meets business with Jesse Lou, the CEO of Conductor Labs. Jesse shares his unique insights into the indispensable role of Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA) in guiding the commercialization of climate technologies. We then explore a particular use case — biomining — with Jayme Feyhl-Buska of Homeworld Collective. As innovators in biotech, it's paramount to understand that while groundbreaking ideas hold gre...
How can biotechnology revolutionize heavy industries and convert carbon waste into a valuable resource? In this special cross-posted episode—from our friends Erum and Karl at the Grow Everything Biotech Podcast and Messaginglab—we feature Moji Karimi, co-founder of Cemvita, a company leading the way in carbon conversion technology. Moji shares Cemvita’s journey from a bold vision in industrial biotech to real-world solutions that repurpose carbon emissions into valuable products. From reshapi...
(Recorded July 2024) In this episode, Paul Reginato—co-founder of Homeworld Collective—turns the mic on Dan Goodwin, Homeworld’s co-founder and Executive Director, to explore his journey from near-failures in Boise, Idaho, to becoming a trailblazer in climate biotechnology. Dan reflects on how his formative years at Harvey Mudd College and his time at Stanford under AI visionary Fei-Fei Li, coupled with his innovative stint at IDEO, ignited his passion for entrepreneurship and shaped his visi...
Join us as we explore the innovative world of protein engineering with Samuel Thompson. Samuel's work focuses on engineering proteins to function in organic solvents, environments that would be hostile to traditional cell-based life. This approach has significant implications for bridging the gap between the enzymes market and the trillion-dollar specialty chemicals market, potentially leading to decentralized chemical production with a much lower environmental footprint. In this episode, Sam...
Join us as Sam Abernethy, Methane Removal Scientist from Spark Climate Solutions, and Paul Reginato of Homeworld Collective explore why tackling methane could be even more impactful than focusing on carbon dioxide in the near-term. Methane's potent warming potential and short-lived nature make it a high-leverage target for climate mitigation. We delve into nature’s own methane eaters—methanotrophs—and how they could help reduce atmospheric methane levels. From bioreactors to genetically...
How can protein science shape the future of food and climate solutions? Meet Anum Glasgow, a leading researcher at Columbia University, whose journey—rooted in her Pakistani heritage and a childhood of curiosity on the Jersey Shore—led her to the cutting edge of protein engineering. Anum shares how her fascination with protein folding evolved into groundbreaking research on designing multifunctional proteins and therapeutics. We explore the hidden elegance of nature’s self-folding systems and...
What role does biotechnology play in solving the climate crisis? Join us as we spotlight Ahmed Badran, assistant professor at the Scripps Research Institute and a leader in climate biotech innovation. Ahmed is a recipient of Homeworld Collective's Garden Grants for Protein Engineering. Ahmed shares his journey, from growing up in Egypt in a family of scientists to becoming a pioneer in engineering enzymes for climate solutions. We dive into the fascinating intersection of machine ...
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