Generative AI is being used to improve processes in many industries – from automating office work to creating better marketing materials – but it’s science and engineering where it could have even more impact.
When used in combination with biology, generative AI can also be applied to reduce or even eliminate the industrial processes of material production, dramatically reducing the environmental costs of human consumption.
Synthetic biology, a market estimated at €10.4 billion in 2022, has the potential to create products beyond our imagination. In fact, the McKinsey Global Institute has predicted that 60% of everything humans consume could be produced using biology.
We are already seeing a number of companies producing a range of products in key industries – materials, chemicals, food, agriculture and pharmaceuticals – using synthetic biology.
Dissolve food and chemicals
For those not quite sold on plant-based food alternatives, lab-grown food products may seem like the future.
Take a company like Perfect Day, which produces organic milk using precision fermentation – where molecularly identical dairy proteins such as casein or whey are produced by encoding the DNA sequences of milk proteins in microorganisms such as yeast or mold, which are then fermented with nutrients and sugar in the milk proteins. tanks (similar to how beer is produced), producing proteins identical to traditional dairy proteins.
Perfect Days’ milk protein produces up to 97% less CO2 emissions and 99% less blue water than traditional milk production.
According to the company, if just 5% of the milk consumed in Europe were animal-free, the equivalent of 660,000 trips around the world in gasoline would be saved. Governments should take bigger steps to both invest in the production of bio-based milk and encourage consumers to switch.
Bio-based chemicals are an example that has made headlines recently, with the US government setting a target to produce at least 30% of its chemicals through biomanufacturing processes over the next twenty years.
With global emissions from the chemical industry set to account for around 2% of total CO2 emissions by 2021, bio-based chemicals have the potential to dramatically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
One company that has had a lot of traction in this area is Solugen, which mixes corn syrup with genetically engineered enzymes to create replacements for common chemicals normally made using phosphates and oil.
However, many companies in the field are struggling to find commercial traction.
We will need significant investments, both in public and private spaces, to accelerate the production of bio-based chemicals.
Dissolve materials
Synthetic biology is also used for the production and recycling of materials. Take concrete: it is essential to build our homes and offices, but has a huge carbon footprint, with cement production responsible for 8% of the world’s total CO2 emissions.
Biologists have now developed new forms of low-carbon concrete, including one that absorbs CO2 using an enzyme found in blood. When small cracks form in the concrete, the enzyme interacts with CO2, mimicking the properties of concrete and filling the crack.
Likewise, synthetic biology has the potential to transform the life cycle of materials such as plastics and polymers commonly used in water bottles and clothing.
First, scientists have developed enzymes that can break down PET plastic commonly found in beverage bottles, reducing the impact of our waste on the environment.
Similarly, we can produce new forms of plastic using enzymes, reducing our dependence on petrochemicals.
However, many of the existing low-carbon concrete solutions are expensive technologies that are far from commercialized, or cheaper alternatives that provide limited emission reductions.
Much of the innovative technology that currently exists in space is only slightly beyond proof-of-concept. Significant investments will be required to develop and scale up the technology for widespread adoption.
Accelerated R&D
Essentially, synthetic biology attempts to change the sequence encoded in a protein’s DNA so that it does something different.
The traditional nature of research is based on trial and error, meaning that creating effective products has traditionally been extremely costly and time-consuming. It is not unusual for 95% of designed proteins tested in the laboratory to fail to meet design specifications.
This is where generative AI comes into the picture: large language models can be trained on DNA sequences and experimental results on known proteins, meaning we can predict the most suitable DNA sequences for a protein that exhibits desired characteristics.
This allows scientists to significantly increase the chance of achieving design goals when developing a protein.
Using the latest biological research and protein sequence analysis, generative AI can give scientists the ability to ‘reverse engineer’ a protein to achieve the desired output with fewer, more successful experiments than possible with previous methods.
Synthetic biology companies working in space are already experimenting with generative AI models to improve their platforms. For example, LanzaTech is experimenting with generative AI to design DNA sequences for enzymes that produce microbes for clothing, plastic, jet fuel and even perfume; and Zero Coffee uses an AI-powered flavor optimization platform to develop “beanless coffee.”
There is also the potential for software to provide generative AI models that synthetic biology companies can implement into their own processes.
Trained on data generated in a wet lab, as well as on publicly available data and customer data, Cradle’s platform allows users to engineer desired protein function and properties, making it possible to make protein-based products much create and scale faster and at greater cost. -effective.
The future is biology
So while the use of generative AI in biotechnology is already a huge market – worth almost €50 million in 2022 – it is still nothing compared to the synthetic biology market as a whole. We need to bridge the gap between AI engineers and biologists with the same goal: to have a positive impact on society.
While generative AI in biology holds great promise to produce sustainable solutions, tackling the climate crisis requires a multifaceted approach that includes policy changes, technological innovations and investments.
There must be mutual collaboration between different governments, investors, Big Tech and emerging startups for generative AI to have a meaningful impact on the climate crisis.
Stef van Grieken is co-founder and CEO of Cradle.
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