The Living Revolution

Wastewater is a gold mine for energy, nutrients and water. Marc Wehmeijer dispels myths about breaking in to the wastewater industry, and takes us on a tour of the global wastewater treatment landscape from the deserts of Durango, Mexico to the Swiss Alps.Marc Wehmeijer is the CEO of ThinkTIM, a company that designs, manufactures, installs and services wastewater treatment recycling units. Wehmeijer advocates for the use of artificial wetlands as treatment methods and to promote biodiversity. He emphasises wastewater as a 'microbiological zoo', detailing how we can extract phosphates from wastewater and use excess sludge to produce energy.  Additionally, he promotes segmenting wastewater treatment processes with the end use in mind - for example, not using portabilised water for crop irrigation. The key message of wastewater treatment being: decentralise, segment and capitalise to the full extent!The Living Revolution brings you scientists, industry leaders and entrepreneurs working on engineering biology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. Listen in to hear the trials and successes of the bioeconomy.This podcast is produced by Sara Knurowska. The full transcript can be found using this link.

Algae is a high potential and high protein food. Learn how engineers and entrepreneurs like Peter Mponzi are using algae to cultivate the future of nutrition.Peter Mponzi is a chemical process engineer by training and current entrepreneur in algal production. He has eight plus years experience in the renewable fuel industry, and is currently focusing specifically on downstream algal processing and scale-up. Mponzi talks us through the technical, regulatory and market success criteria for algal cultivation and what you can expect from the algal revolution.The Living Revolution brings you scientists, industry leaders and entrepreneurs working on engineering biology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. Listen in if you too like to hear the trials and successes of the bioeconomy.This podcast is produced by Sara Knurowska.Access the transcript for this episode using this link. 

Join us for a whirlwind tour of the key problems with modern agriculture and the alternative emerging technologies. In this final episode with Agata the biocontainment researcher and Simon, Head of Human Practices, from the Wageningen iGEM team, we discuss how synthetic biology can be used as a technology to prevent crop frost damage. We reflect on using synthetic biology in agriculture and discuss common misconceptions, and the gap between scientific advancements and public perceptions behind the nascent field.

In an iGEM competition, open source interchangeable parts of genetic material (BioBricks) allow hundreds of teams of students to create synbio solutions to real world problems. Joined by captain Johannes and treasurer Niko from the 2023 Wageningen iGEM team, we discuss their challenges and ideas about creating novelty, using non-model organisms, and the importance of educating ourselves about novel technologies, not to be dissuade by fear. 

The Wageningen iGEM Team is developing a solution to prevent frost damage using synthetic biology. Listen to find out more about how frost damage affects farmers, markets and us as consumers, and how Wageningen plan the scientific aspects of their project. Get an insight into the dynamics of team work and the attitudes of aspiring scientists.If you enjoyed this episode, follow us and give us a like on your favourite podcasting platforms :)Tune in to more episodes here!

Can you patent a newly discovered protein? Does getting a patent depend on the application? What does intellectual property encompass? Our guests, IP specialists Sara Holland and David Holt from Potter Clarkson, join us to shed light on these topics and explore why protecting biotechnological innovations is crucial. Get ready to expand your knowledge and better understand what can be considered an 'invention'.

Sebastian Cocioba is an amateur scientist  pursuing his scientific curiousities from his home lab and mentoring young scientists via Binomica Labs. His mission is to enable agency through building open source tools and allow anyone to explore the world around them. Coming up in this episode, we talk oceans, what lives in different benthic zones, and also about jargon and communicating science, edutainment and a small bay drone made from trash.  Binomica Labs for science mentorshipSebastian Cocioba on TwitterFollow us for upcoming episodes!

Sebastian Cocioba is an amateur scientist conducting research from his home lab. In our previous episode, we discussed how he's building tools for the future molecular florists.Here and now, we take this topic further, starting with the example of a DIY directed evolution machine made cheaply. If you're an engineering student, we encourage you to make, improve and remake his designs. You'll be supporting a community of open source directed evolution machines. In this episode, we also hear a story about one of the students Sebastian mentored: a potential future molecular florist? It's a story about a science competition, an interesting plant, how to tell a good story and more. Binomica Labs provides the wetware, hardware, and more for thoughtful experiments. We hope you like this episode. Binomica Labs for science mentorshipSebastian Cocioba on TwitterFollow us for upcoming episodes!

Sebastian Cocioba is a scientist and researcher building open source tools to make research easier and cheaper. Do you, by any chance, know where the M9 media comes from and what it was originally used? Sebastian takes us on a two year journey to discover the origin paper of this medium and how he ended up falling in love with photobiology, better defining his research questions and more. We take the journey with him as he becomes a researcher for hire and starts a mentorship programme for other keen scientists with Binomica Labs; the wetware, thoughtware, hardware to help you follow your curiousities and learn about the world around you.https://binomicalabs.org/ https://twitter.com/ATinyGreenCell Follow us for more episodes like this: https://linktr.ee/thelivingrevolution 

Sebasian Cocioba is an independent researcher, conducting the discovery, research and more from his own home lab. This is part one of our conversation with Sebastian. He details his first experiences in science from seeing a maple leaf and thinking "I need to understand" this,  to being recruited for a start-up and learning how to build a lab from ground up. Stay tuned for further episodes!Check out his Twitter for what he terms his open lab book:  https://twitter.com/ATinyGreenCell

Doing science is not a lonely endeavour. It involves collaborating with others, using your shared knowledge to find solutions to pressing problems, and pushing past the boundaries of what is known. As an EBRC council member, professor and founder of the Synthetic Biology Young Speaker series (SynBYSS), Tae Seok Moon has dedicated his time to empowering young people in science and solving pressing problems. His mission is to create GEMs (genetically engineered microbes) that can both diagnose disease/pollution and improve the circumstances of each. Imagine, for example, the bacteria in your gut. This bacteria is surprisingly important for your mood - what is known as the brain-gut (mind-gut) connection. What if we were to produce a probiotic that could tell you about the state of your mood, and also perhaps work to change it? Looking more broadly, could we remediate our environment using crafted ‘probiotics’ for the soil? Biosecurity an biosafety are very important for solutions involving GEMs. The Moon lab has developed a stable CRISPR-based kill switch mechanism that works in multiple microbes, ensuring that they only work in their specified environment. Working together with other scientists across disciplines has been vital to creating solutions that work. Our conversation took a turn down how to ensure interdisciplinarity in projects and about how young people in science should be empowered and supported. Tae Seok Moon runs SynBYSS. In these weekly seminars, the early-stage rising stars in science have the stage for thirty minutes to showcase their research, whilst the more senior scientists give brief five minute talks. This style inverts the current standards and gives early-stage researchers and post-docs a chance to present their work. If you know a rising star, the contact details are below. We hope you enjoy this episode.Tae Seok Moon social media handles:Twitter: @Moon_Synth_BioLinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/tae-seok-moon-12515b23SynBYSS: https://www.youtube.com/@taeseokmoon7442/videosStable CRISPR-based kill switches: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28163-5Synthetic Biology Young Speaker’s Series: https://ebrc.org/synthetic-biology-young-speaker-series-synbyss/Making Space for young speakers: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41589-022-01001-xProbiotics for the soil: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167779922002281Engineering Biology for Climate and Sustainability: https://roadmap.ebrc.org/engineering-biology-for-climate-sustainability/

Dr. Clarice D. Aiello is a quantum engineer interested in how quantum mechanics informs biology. She fearlessly leads the Quantum Biology Tech (QuBiT) Lab in UCLA where she explores if spin physics can account for relevant biosensing and be used to develop technologies. Quantum Biology is a nascent field in both physics and biology and much collaboration is needed to bridge the gap between both fields. Although the data of Quantum mechanics in biology is correlative, research has not been able to prove the functional relevance of quantum effects such as an electron’s spin to manipulate physiological outcomes. Possibly in the future we will be able to tailor magnetic fields to drive cell activities, treat injuries, drive stem cell regeneration, or manipulate cell fate decisions in embryonic stem cells. 

Paige Whitehead is CEO and cofounder of Nyoka, a company on a mission to lighten up the world with proteins. But how? In this episode, we explore bioluminescence, its vital uses, and how it could be used to clean up a toxic chemical industry. 

Research is behind bars: paywalls and a closed peer-review process. You pay both to publish and to read published works. A small fraction of scientists are involved in peer review, creating a bottleneck and limiting the range of expertise that can improve rigor. Finally, publishing takes a long time, with the rapidly growing body of scientific literature needing to get through the peer-review bottleneck, stifling the innovative process of scientific discovery and application. Arcadia Science is using an open-science platform to encourage innovation and creative experimentation by reimagining what publishing science could be like – and they’re looking for people like you to rethink how you share your science in ways that are more rapid, rigorous, useful, and open. While their research sharing site displays the science coming from Arcadia, it is built upon an open-source platform, PubPub, that is accessible to all. On PubPub, other communities can publish discoverable and citable scientific information in useful ways – whether that be a method, data set, or synthesis of varied data more similar to research articles. Publishing early and often is encouraged to speed up the process of innovation. Who decides the utility and rigour of the work? Without a paywall and with the ability to openly engage, scientists with diverse expertise everywhere can use the information and comment publicly about their thoughts on its utility and rigour. Arcadia Science feels like a scientific social media. The co-founders Seemay Chou, Jed McCaleb and Prachee Avasthi are building an ecosystem to help scientists reimagine how we can make the publishing, researching and funding of science better.

Supply chains are large complex systems with vast amounts of data, plagued with problems. Products are contaminated, go missing, are resold without permission, are sold as something else. Within the food supply chain, it can take up to eight weeks to sort a contamination issue. Aanika Biosciences have developed a non-GMO solution to track, trace and authenticate products along this supply chain. Co-founder Vishaal talks us through how using their inert microbial spores can guarantee the accurate identification of your products. By providing robust traceability, Aanika Biosciences are reducing the inefficiencies in the supply chain. Our discussion follows the use of their product, the mechanisms through which it works, future projects and how this start-up was built by following the problem first approach. 

Current automation is expensive and difficult to use. Scientists have to learn complex programming languages, becoming more programmers than experimenters. Machines they use understand basic commands such as ‘draw one ml of liquid from this tube to the next’, yet the burden of ensuring that protocols and methodologies are complete, carried out accurately and without fault still falls with the scientists themselves. A mountain of manual labour is a main aspect of a scientist’s job. Keoni and Roya from Trilobio want to change this. Their compact automation units and new standardised synbio language can bring a future where scientists have more time to think creatively. A future in which methodologies can be transferred using code and machines can complete protocols themselves. This will mean more experiments being done in a shorter space of time and a wider range of people gaining access to doing science. Imagine being able to do scientific experiments in your school years. Imagine wasting less time correcting iGEM cloning and transformation experiments and, instead, focusing on the innovation that can be unleashed. 

 The environmental microbiome is facing a series of stresses that have passed the tipping point with pertinent examples including microplastic infestation and desertification. What if we could use microbes on an environmental scale to improve the fabric of this microbiome? Prof Victor de Lorenzo proposes that for the problems in which simply relieving the pressure is not enough, large-scale bioremediation solutions should be employed. We discuss the main challenges in scaling these solutions from lab to field, consider the interdisciplinary earth systems approaches needed to overcome them and how we could use science and technology to reimagine the biosphere. 

Proteins are the functional unit of all life processes and as such it is important that we maximise our understanding of their interactions with other molecules in order to study their effects. Dr. Tomas Rube talked with us about his recently developed method for estimating protein-ligand binding affinity and the importance of this for understanding transcription factors and how they control our genes.

Optogenetics is the study of light-controlled biological systems, this may sound futuristic, however, many organisms already change in response to light. In this episode, we talked with Dr. Armin Baumschlager about his work and understanding of how we can engineer artificial light-control in biology. We spoke about the applications of this in research, metabolic engineering and how one might go about engineering proteins for light-controlled behaviour.

Biocomposite materials can utilise potentially waste carbon sources and capture them for a useful purpose. For example, Dr. Aled Deakin Roberts talked with us about how he can create a biocomposite material from ashes using a bio-inspired adhesive. Further to this, biocomposites also open up opportunities for additional properties, such as the addition of organic molecules that cannot be added to classic materials as they are broken down at high temperatures, biocompatibility and potentially improved properties. Dr Deakin Roberts talked with us about his invention, space concrete, known as 'Starcrete', a biocomposite material with twice the strength of typical concrete and held together by microalgae.