131. Leaf It to Science: How Foray Bioscience's Ashley Beckwith is Reforesting the Future

[00:00:00] Karl: All right. Ashley Beckwith, foray Bioscience. We're so happy to have you on the Grow Everything Podcast.

[00:00:08] Ashley: So good to be here. thank you for welcoming me onto your show.

[00:00:11] Karl: We're gonna get into what Foray does, but first we wanted to set the stage and get into some background. You actually grew up in Colorado. I lived in Colorado for a while. It's a beautiful place. , And you saw the forest disappear. First of all, what part of Colorado?

[00:00:26] Ashley: Yeah, I grew up on the front range front and center where all the action is. A lot of housing development. Every time I go back feels like a different place that I'm returning to.

[00:00:34] Karl: Yeah, it's crazy actually when you go out there, I went to grad school in Boulder and used to commute to Denver and that whole Boulder to Denver Road was empty back then. And you could sometimes see wolves, Running across the planes in the morning when you're on the bus, and that is all gone.

[00:00:51] Karl: So you watch the forest disappear and, how'd that shape your relationship with plants and with nature and how did that lead to founding foray?

[00:01:00] Ashley: in my early life, I moved from the Desert of Arizona to the forest of Colorado. And so that was just a rude awakening for me and my first introduction to like forests and trees. , And I was just so in awe of these forest ecosystems. And so I spent a lot of my childhood running around, , in this forest in my backyard, and.

[00:01:19] Ashley: Not long after, I'd really come to love this place. The housing development started moving in. , These forests, that I played in every day were starting to get ripped out, from behind our house. it was challenging to watch as a kid, I really wanted to do something, I would, scheme with my friend, try to figure out like, Hey, how can we stop this from happening? but we really felt like we had no agency being children in that stage of our lives. So just watching this destruction take place, was really formative for me and had sort of reverberating effects into my later life.

[00:01:51] Ashley: and then of course, being an incompetent of Colorado, you become really familiar with the concept of gigantic wildfires coming through and, wiping a lot of the forests on many of those. That I, saw burn also have never recovered. so it's just been this really transformative thing to watch over the course of my life and my experience there.

[00:02:10] Ashley: that lingering motivation and problem space is something that drove me ultimately into this, founding of for a and still is the basis of the problem that we wanna solve.

[00:02:21] Erum: Wow. Yes. I mean, I'm excited to share more. We, shared with our audience a little bit about foray in the intro. But I would love to know a little bit more about your background. I can imagine you as a child, going to stop this big corporation on your bike, like a stranger Things gang, just riding your bikes.

[00:02:36] Karl: Pesky kids.

[00:02:38] Erum: kids trying to save the world from the upside down. we need those kids now 'cause if we live in the upside down, if he's watched the news. But, so you've had this early passion for forests, for plants. and despite that, you trained as an engineer. So can you tell us more about your path and how your engineering background gives you unique perspective in solving the problem of, forestation or leveraging plants?

[00:03:02] Ashley: Yeah, I think, exposure's a big, Factor. in my early life I didn't know anybody that worked with plants or with forest systems. And so I couldn't even conceive of a path to, this world where I could have an impact on these systems. but also in my years growing as a young adult, someone in my family was diagnosed with breast cancer and that.

[00:03:23] Ashley: Also hit me really deeply and I felt, whatever I do, I wanna have impact on people and help those that, are, not in a position to help themselves in this moment so I found myself going down this path towards medicine and I don't have the stomach to be doctor.

[00:03:39] Ashley: So I wound up in this field of engineering and medical research at the intersection of biomedical and mechanical engineering. I spent many hours in a lab, working with cells, of the mammalian variety and materials and understanding how they interact and how we can build better systems to create better medical outcomes.

[00:03:56] Ashley: And, worked in industry. In the medical device world for a little while before finding my way to, MIT where I did my graduate studies. ultimately my master's degree was focused on building these little microchips where we could insert small pieces of tumor biopsy from an individual and test out different personal, cancer treatments on those, and evaluate the response to try to, move towards a more personalized cancer therapy for. after my master's though, I, abruptly changed course. I had a moment to pause and reflect you know, you have not quite a midlife crisis. I call it quarter life crisis went off to the farm and worked on a permaculture farm for a little while just rekindled my passion for plants and I started to see how these really intentionally designed collaborative systems between humans and plants and animals could be fruitful for, for everybody involved. so it started me on this path of thinking, about the ways that we interact and engage with our plant systems and how could we redesign this engagement with them to be more regenerative and less extractive as a whole.

[00:05:02] Ashley: So I came back to, MIT with these thoughts bubbling in my head and pose this thought experiment like, what could we do, if we could grow differently? so inspired by, Shortages of, things we see in the medical space. For example, we have a shortage of, kidneys for kidney transplants.

[00:05:20] Ashley: and there's this interesting, area of work where people are focused on, how can we grow more kidneys without just having to harvest them for more people, which obviously comes with a lot of, undesirable consequences. so this field of tissue engineering bubbled up and that was really active at the time when I was studying.

[00:05:36] Ashley: And with that, in my mind I thought, what if we had organ or tissue engineering alternatives, for our plant system so we could grow what we needed in a really targeted way? So I launched into this thought experiment. This became a physical experiment, in lab grown wood to apply these tissue engineering concepts and use cells, those fundamental building blocks of life that we all learn about through our high school biology classes.

[00:06:00] Ashley: and use those actually build. Wood outside of, the tree. And so that opened the door to this really interesting line of research, that I explored for a number of years. and I continued to be enthralled by this question of, if you could redesign any plant process and shape it from the cell up, what could become possible?

[00:06:19] Ashley: so Lab grown Wood was one example of that. One teaser of what might be possible in that space.

[00:06:25] Karl: I think when we first looked into you, attraction was who are the people that are talking about growing wood without the. Trees

[00:06:33] Karl: Lab grown wood probably comes with benefits, pros and cons. And given that forests are so beautiful and so necessary, and there's this whole concept of rewilding the forest, with trees, and we start to learn about your pivot and how things have changed. But maybe you can give us, the current foray elevator pitch?

[00:06:50] Karl: What's your mission, in a sentence or two.

[00:06:53] Ashley: Yeah, I'm gonna cheat a little bit and I'm gonna give some more background I'll give you the two sentence summary, at the end. But yeah, the lab grand grid really opened our eyes to some of these other challenges that stood between us, achieving this vision of growing only what we need, and where we were today.

[00:07:09] Ashley: it really got us thinking about. there's this concept of, problem progression. So you have this massive problem that needs to be solved, a big carry problem that needs to be solved. But before you can solve that problem, you actually have to solve a series of smaller problems that come before it.

[00:07:24] Ashley: So an example would be like, if you wanna invent Uber. the first problem you have to solve is, okay, well how do we make the internet? so there's this series of problems that need to be solved. lab grown wood is sort of the Uber.

[00:07:35] Ashley: through that process we recognized, okay, well the internet doesn't exist yet, so Now we need to build the internet. so that's what led us to a renewed thinking about where we're building and why. So the real problem that we're passionate about today is that, you know, 40% Plant species are threatened with extinction and humans are a driving cause of that. So we need these new ways to collaborate with plants to ensure long-term access to these plant products and plant ecosystems that we rely on. So at Forer, we grow harvest free plant products straight from the cell so that we can precisely grow exactly what we need.

[00:08:06] Ashley: Whether that's molecules, materials, seeds, and equipping us all as humans to take less and plant more to support this health of these systems that sustain us. So our secret sauce is figuring new ways to design this growth economically and quickly so that we can get these approaches out the door a lot faster.

[00:08:27] Ashley: and we do this with the help of some of our internally designed tools, a software co scientist that's specifically built to help us navigate this complex world of plant science. And so we use this tool internally to power development work with partners, building better access to plant products.

[00:08:44] Ashley: and we're also in the process of rolling the software tool out for broader use by growers and biomanufacturing propagation and regeneration. that's a long answer. And the, the short answer is in summary, we build things with plant cells and we're good at figuring out how to build things with plant cells, and we can help you be good at it too.

[00:09:02] Ashley: So that's the two sentence

[00:09:04] Ashley: summary.

[00:09:05] Karl: great. I wanted to just, make a. A quick comment. so we've also seen, this company Living Carbon that I think you probably know, they're focused on helping grow trees faster. and you guys are more focused on the cell side of plants in general. Is that correct?

[00:09:21] Ashley: Yeah, exactly. Cells are a fundamental input to all of these processes. So whether you wanna grow a whole tree faster, or whether you wanna grow just a part of a tree without having to grow the whole tree, cells are really the building block of this life. one big step in creating faster growing trees, especially in the case of living carbon, would be okay, we have to engineer, better genetics.

[00:09:44] Ashley: we do that at the cellular level, but then somehow we have to turn that cell back into a tree. And that process of going from cell to tree we call it regeneration. It's a huge, barrier in delivering a lot of these. Improved more resilient crops into the world. And so that's part of the process that we're looking to make a lot easier with our systems.

[00:10:06] Ashley: And by building this more robust and holistic understanding of, plant science and plant processes.

[00:10:12] Erum: Yeah. so walk. A visual standpoint in terms of using plant cells for production, because recently we had, Elon Sobel of Bio Harvest and we had Michael Hilson of exosomes, and they're producing plant molecules from either, fermentation or sulf free manufacturing.

[00:10:31] Erum: Can you paint us a picture of what foray is doing in comparison to them and what is it? Look like from.

[00:10:39] Ashley: Yeah. So lot of people operating in this space are producers. They're delivering the product at the end. But the process of getting to that product involved a lot of trial and error and, research and development and money and investment. And, eventually, were able to generate this successful process so not.

[00:10:58] Ashley: Building products, the scale of the products, but we're building that process. But when we think about, cells and cell systems, we're zooming out a little bit further from just this molecular production space. The plant cell is this incredibly versatile agent of production. So the plant cell contains all the information necessary to create any part of that plant or any product of that plant.

[00:11:22] Ashley: so right now in, bio manufacturing, you often see. This one mode of production where the cell is used as a factory. you isolate the cell from the plant. you grow up a bunch of these cells in a disorganized collection. you can feed those cells with nutrient broth in a bioreactor.

[00:11:41] Ashley: And then you can turn on the internal machinery in those cells to pump out certain molecules of interest. So we see the cells as factories model. But at Foray we also see a couple of other models of using cells as agents of production. So the second would be using cells as the physical building blocks for what materials, for, delivery or packaging of, internal components we see.

[00:12:11] Ashley: other companies in plant cell culture playing around in this space. We've obviously done some work in lab grown wood in the past, but we also see people working on fiber production and beyond. This would be the cells as building blocks model. And then the third mode of production would be these cells are actually.

[00:12:27] Ashley: The foundation for creating a whole plant or creating a seed, which is a precursor to that whole plant. And so we see these cells as regenerators as well. so once you're starting from the cell, it's really quote unquote a stem cell. It has all this developmental potential and you can steer it across all these different directions.

[00:12:45] Ashley: So a lot of people are specialized, into one of these, production processes and. focused on how do you go from one to 100? How do you scale this and get this out into the world? at four we're asking the questions, okay, how do we get from zero to one and how do we do that faster so that the people who are really good at getting it from one to 100 can really thrive and get these product out into the world.

[00:13:06] Erum: Yeah, That helps clarify, how, you're different in this world of bio manufacturing this is our first time meeting and I didn't do as much research as I should have, so my apologies, but it's like, wow, I'm starting to think of the possibilities.

[00:13:21] Erum: I know Carl is, but Carl, please, I know you and I have a hive mind and have similar questions, but go for.

[00:13:28] Karl: Yeah, I mean, so on one level what you're saying is, using that Uber analogy, being able to take cells and grow. Would, that would be, the Uber and what you guys are doing is really using the tools that would enable that.

[00:13:39] Karl: So we're not gonna get a lab grown desk anytime soon, which I'm okay with. unless it's gonna be special shape or, some kind of rare wood,

[00:13:47] Ashley: Especially.

[00:13:48] Karl: you know, rare woods, but, what do you think people should be paying attention to in this space?

[00:13:52] Karl: what's exciting? What are the big challenges?

[00:13:56] Ashley: Yeah. I think what's exciting about this space in general is the potential of plants and plant cells. I think biotech tends to focus a lot on the microbial space or mammalian, world where things are a little bit more developed. but plants have so much potential and they have this developmental range that.

[00:14:17] Ashley: we can produce from the same source so we can produce a wide variety of products, as opposed to engineering a microbe to produce one thing really well. I think these are really interesting and complimentary tools, and it's exciting to me to start seeing plant cell, and tissue culture, getting more attention and traction as, a complimentary tool in the toolkit of biotech.

[00:14:41] Erum:

[00:14:41] Ashley: I think, plant systems are so, varied, and the outcomes are so varied or the needs are so varied and Even though there's a lot of people working in this field, you have some people working over here, building new access to bioactives and medicines for, cosmetics and health and beauty.

[00:14:58] Ashley: You have people over here working on fabricated seeds. You have people over here working on new propagation systems for a particular plant. and this knowledge. That we're developing is really valuable, but it's so distributed and so dispersed and disconnected that we're not productively moving forward, in the way that we could.

[00:15:19] Ashley: So there are a lot of people banging their heads against these different walls. and it turns out, we're all banging our heads against the same wall. And so if we could see that, we could start to connect that learning, that knowledge. give it context. We could all start moving in the same direction, rowing the same direction, and getting where we need to go a lot faster.

[00:15:39] Ashley: And so that's part of the problem that we're trying solve is how do we take, This research on, how do we create rosewood oil from a cell culture instead of, are we seeing it from this endangered tree and this other research on, okay, well how do we propagate rosewood so we can restore these systems to the forest where they live?

[00:16:00] Ashley: well it turns out, Those sets of biological knowledge are related. so what if we could bring those learnings together and create a more comprehensive understanding of cellular processes and thus achieve

[00:16:10] Ashley: better control,

[00:16:11] Ashley: so we can have these compound effects? Yeah, I was gonna say, I think you need to be the one who organizes the conference that brings all these disparate minds together so that you guys all know what, is going on, and then you can make a 10 year plan.

[00:16:24] Karl: It's easy for us to say.

[00:16:28] Ashley: Yeah, no, this is exactly what we're, passionate about doing and creating this software platform that can help to bring context to data that can help bring additional understanding to the data that's been developed in the past and help us fill in the gaps that exist so that we can be more productive as a field in the future.

[00:16:46] Ashley: that's one thing that we're really excited about this software co scientist tool and RD management tool that we're about to roll out.

[00:16:53] Erum: Yeah.

[00:16:53] Erum: So walk us through a case study. So talk to us about the possibilities. You talk to us about the Rosewood, how does foray play into this? You mentioned, there's a wet lab component to this as well, or a manufacturing component.

[00:17:05] Erum: walk us through a case study and if you wanna use Rosewood oil, that's fine. Or something else that you're very excited about or maybe you're working on today.

[00:17:12] Ashley: Yeah. Yeah. we have a number of active projects today that I'm really excited about that really showcases the versatility of this process oriented mindset to developing these cell culture systems. So one is. we're working with a nonprofit out in California that is focused on preserving the biodiversity that exists in the state of California.

[00:17:34] Ashley: there are some species that have been, recently extinct out there, again, wiped out by enriching housing developments. so we are working on a path to reintroduce those recently extinct species, into the wild, by. Creating a seed from a limited amount of plant material that is still available.

[00:17:53] Ashley: we take this plant material, we generate the cells, we turn those cells into embryos, then we encapsulate those embryos in a nutrient pocket. So in effect, it's a fabricated seed. We have the biological component, which is destined to become the plant. And we have the package of, food to get that embryo through its early days of life and still it starts photosynthesizing for itself.

[00:18:15] Ashley: so we're building this, pathway for de-extinction through fabricated seeds to be able to reintroduce these species. So that wild. So this is one case study and one thing that becomes possible when we are able to bring. This type of technology efficiently to a species where we don't have a lot of plant material or resources to play around with.

[00:18:36] Ashley: this is a rare species, so have to get it right, from the beginning. 'cause you don't wanna waste these resources. So that's where engineering a better process for approaching this will help us

[00:18:46] Ashley: be really

[00:18:46] Ashley: strategic.

[00:18:47] Karl: I wanna unpack that a little bit more. my favorite class in grad school was plant cell and tissue culture. I was lucky enough to actually work with plant cells and grow them on Petri dishes and, you could control the media so that you would, either get roots or you would get leaves.

[00:19:03] Karl: But you're talking about doing that on, a level where, either you can take the plant cells and grow seeds from them. What does that look like? in practice, maybe without giving away too much information, Am I getting it right? you would basically do plant cell tissue culture, but maybe you're manipulating the cells in a way that you're gonna get seeds.

[00:19:22] Ashley: Yeah, so If you imagine that cell lives on this landscape of developmental opportunity. So from that quote unquote stem cell, we could nudge that cell. You in your studies, you would've nudged that cell in the direction of root formation.

[00:19:37] Ashley: So you're convincing that cell through these external signals to become a root cell, or you can convince that cell to become a leaf cell or to just continue to persist as this undefined cell. you can also present cell to become an embryo. is the precursor to a seed and an embryo basically just has this dual ability to form both the roots and the leaves from the same biological mass.

[00:20:05] Ashley: So it's on the same landscape of development where you would've played before. why we're excited about this is. Seed supply is a huge barrier when it comes to achieving our psychological restoration goals. So in the US the US Forest Service is usually only restoring about 6% of post wildfire restoration sites.

[00:20:31] Ashley: a big part of that is we don't have the seed to actually meet those planting goals. so I. how can we create access to seed when that seed doesn't exist or it's so impractical, collect that we don't have access through natural, processes.

[00:20:46] Ashley: so we are focused on, taking a limited amount of biological material so we can take cells from, little plant biopsy. We can take cells from. a handful of seeds and turn those into, these embryos, which can make many more seeds. so we can amplify those seed stores and make sure that restoration takes place, in a timeframe where it's still able to be effective.

[00:21:09] Erum: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's really incredible. the idea of creating seeds, and this application for, creating more biodiversity in California to restore, lands that have been, ravaged by wildfires, which is such a huge issue. and then I also think about, being able to. maybe take it a step further a little bit, wild in terms of, plants that are extinct and, thinking about, how to, de extinct them, the whole colossal world that they're focused on.

[00:21:36] Erum: Animals, plants, I think they're all interesting, but maybe more, accessible

[00:21:40] Erum: And it reminds me of, also revive and restore, which I'm sure you know that group well. so that's cool. The California making these seats enable biodiversity.

[00:21:50] Erum: is that the, main vertical, but you said you get different projects. How else can we leverage the creation of seeds and, I'd love to learn more.

[00:21:58] Ashley: It's a, great question. Yeah. In the de-extinction world. just a put final cap on that. it's such an interesting space right now and we're thinking about, animals 'cause they're super charismatic, but this extinction is happening Now and how do we save these species that provide us value today and won't be here tomorrow? I think the opportunity to act before, it's 20,000 years later, is really compelling. But it does force people to really appreciate these resources, on. in individualized level, we have a lot of plant blindness.

[00:22:30] Ashley: Like, oh, I still see a lot of green outside, but the health of those plant systems is totally dependent on this, Population, community level collection of these various species that self reinforce and create this positive environment for all of them. even though there's green outside, it doesn't mean that it's a healthy ecosystem.

[00:22:50] Ashley: so, being able to implement these seed technologies to that end is really exciting to us. but in terms of other verticals, so our internal passion project is, these fabricated seeds and looking for more opportunities to build and deploy in this space.

[00:23:04] Ashley: But we also do contracted work with partners in other sectors as well. So as I said, we're like process builders. We build trends zero to one, and we help people discover these new ways of producing goods that we depend on every day. So we have another. client in the fiber products world where we're thinking about, how could we build bio better fibers that don't have to be necessarily harvested from trees, if that supply becomes constrained, but could also have better and superior performance so that we could, use less overall.

[00:23:35] Ashley: So this is another interesting line of work. We have done additional work in the production of bioactives or fragrances from a species where we would alternatively have to tear down the tree and Chop it up and extract it in chemicals. so just creating these new pathways and really exploring the full realm of this possibility.

[00:23:56] Ashley: so we work with partners in two ways. One, we're trying to enable people and help people build where they are by rolling out the same platform technologies that we use internally so that they can use them internally as well. We recognize the need to, Get these solutions out the door as quickly as possible.

[00:24:13] Ashley: And that means we need the experts on the problems best equipped to, create and deploy these solutions. that's where we wanna put the power of effective plant r and d in the hands of those people. so that's through our software system. And then we also, collaborate. Our real scientists come and, work on projects collaboratively with partners who engage us to develop processes

[00:24:36] Ashley: together.

[00:24:37] Karl: Wow. so, you guys are doing these partnerships and clearly have clients, but a lot of startups, particularly in biotech or biomanufacturing face, a so-called value of death between proof of concept and commercialization. you guys recently raised some money, maybe not so recently, you can correct me.

[00:24:54] Karl: but what convinced your, investors that for a, could bridge the gap between, that proof of concept and commercialization.

[00:25:00] Ashley: Yeah, I think first is, we have a strong and constant vision to use bio manufacturing to protect and restore ecosystems, and we've been able to find investors who have strong alignment with that vision. so they're really in it for the long haul and they recognize as we do the potential of this technology to be transformative.

[00:25:20] Ashley: The second is we have a business model that I feel makes sense given the state of maturity of the field. so if we're talking about this problem progression that needs to take place, we are, creating that solution to the first problem that needs to be solved. so it, makes sense and we'll be able to, grow as the, as and expand our capabilities as the field continues to mature.

[00:25:44] Ashley: then there's, a history of, execution and what we've been able to, steadily show as we've been building over the last few years. and just producing consistent results I think builds confidence and trust with those investors that have been along for the ride. but again, I think we touched on this before, the unique thing I think about Foray is that where.

[00:26:03] Ashley: Most others in the field are product first. We are this platform, first company, and we recognize the importance of, others being successful in order, for this field to have the impact that we want it to have. So we have this interesting partnership model where success, Success doesn't mean we have success in one product, but it means that we are helping drive innovation across a wide range of products, and it maintains this optionality that, builds resiliency, into our business plan.

[00:26:35] Erum: I mean, the companies that we had on before, oftentimes they are building products to prove out their platform. Right, So the companies that we've had on the past are doing that to showcase to the industry that, Hey, look, this is how you can leverage our platform. And we've proven that we got costs down.

[00:26:52] Erum: so when you first are talking about going from sell to seed, my mind was like, how long does that take? I'm just curious to see how that plays out. From a process, an industrial point of view, because if you're selling to these companies, they're gonna decide if I wanna make a bioactive or a fragrance, which process can get me that fragrance?

[00:27:10] Erum: At the cheapest cost, and obviously going the good quality, but cost is always a factor. What do you think about that? how do you compare against cell-free and all these other types of methodologies to produce the fragrances? Are you saying you'd work with the cell-free companies, or are you going to, compete against them?

[00:27:27] Erum: It'd be good to know from industrial standpoint, how that looks to you.

[00:27:30] Ashley: Yeah, I mean, we're not gonna be selling fragrances, so we won't be direct competitors to, those organizations. But we recognize client cell culture has value in particular applications and gonna be outcompeted by other technologies and other applications.

[00:27:44] Ashley: And so you really do have to be able to do this realistic assessment of when is this the right tool for the job? Plant cells are valuable when it comes to producing really complex products. Whether those are really large and complicated molecules or complicated mixtures of molecules obviously you're not producing plant embryos from yeast.

[00:28:03] Ashley: there are really these well-defined niches where plant cells and plant cell culture will be able to, uniquely. Provide what the customer is looking for, in order to get to a state where we can prove out that product can be produced in plant cell culture.

[00:28:18] Ashley: That's the big mystery. That's the unknown. Today we have like 450,000 land plants in the world, we have experimented in cell culture with a tiny, tiny fraction of them, probably less than a percent, probably much less than a percent. that means there are all of these gaps in knowledge everything is high risk.

[00:28:38] Ashley: so how do you start to bring the risk down overall? How do you start to make. these, new endeavors, more accessible. and more cost effective because right now it's a lot of trial and error. It's super artisanal people. like you said, you have to prove out that it works first.

[00:28:54] Ashley: So you're throwing in tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars into this process to, maybe come out with a successful prototype. Maybe you never even create a successful cell line. And that's a reality for a lot of the cell and tissue culture world in plants today. that's where. there are a whole lot of pieces along this, production chain that require renovation for plant cells because this is still a new, a new field.

[00:29:19] Ashley: So, going from one to 100, is hard and there's a lot of innovation required there, but going from zero to one, that's the blocker. If you can't get to one, you can't get to 100, that's where we're focused, like how do you take an r and d timeline that can be six months or 20 years and cra it all down.

[00:29:39] Ashley: So the upper end of that timeline is always at six months, So how do you make that r and d process? Reliable and accessible that's what we're really

[00:29:47] Ashley: focused on.

[00:29:48] Karl: one of the things that strikes me, Ashley, is I haven't said this in a while, but. In our earlier podcast episodes, I used to say, we need every solution everywhere, all at once. And, hearing you say, this reminds me of that because you've got these efforts that are like, we're planting a trillion trees or a billion trees, and they're.

[00:30:06] Karl: Planting seedlings, and the survival rate is very low, is what I understand. It's one thing to, drop 'em out of an airplane and, blanket, unforced area with them. But you need every solution. You need your solution where you bringing seeds, you might need those, tissue grown saplings.

[00:30:24] Karl: and you need to understand what the climate is gonna do to. and you guys seem to fit really nicely into that. when you think about this entire infrastructure of plant products, what excites you the most about this kind of intersection between biology, forestry, and manufacturing or biomanufacturing?

[00:30:43] Ashley: what excites me is. we are starting to see, with this renewed enthusiasm around plants and our ecological systems and this understanding that, oh, actually, we can't just extract, we have to manage these systems responsibly. We're starting to see. All of these incredible emerging scientific tools applied to understanding these systems.

[00:31:05] Ashley: So from the micro scale to the macro scale, our understanding of these plant systems and what they can do and what they need to survive is maturing at this really exciting rate. And I think, when we start looking from. the epigenetic or genetic level to the ecological level, and we have these multiple perspectives coming together to examine these systems.

[00:31:27] Ashley: I hope, will start to appreciate these systems for what they are and understand them in ways that we had never. Have been able to, we're starting to better understand what does biodiversity really mean? what makes a plant adaptable to its ecosystem? What makes an ecosystem resilient to changes in the climate?

[00:31:45] Ashley: so these are, all amazing. Insights that are coming to fruition now, thanks to the new and emerging tools and the focus of really dedicated people to this space. we have some friends, I'll just do shameless plug for some of their cool work, but we have some friends at the University of Vermont, Dr.

[00:32:01] Ashley: Steve Keller over there, and, Dr. Matt Fitzpatrick over at the University of Maryland who are building this incredible understanding of. How forests are adapting in real time and where in the environment these micro adaptations are happening and, how that knowledge. Can influence, the seeds that we collect and where we use those seeds to have the most resilient and productive forests going into the future as our climates shift and migrate faster than our forests can.

[00:32:29] Ashley: so this is just one example of some of the cool work that's happening that I think will open the doors new ways of, interacting with. These ecosystems. So yeah, that's what I'm cautiously optimistic about All this engagement that's

[00:32:43] Ashley: taking shape.

[00:32:44] Erum: Yeah, I just love your perspective. going from the genetics level to the ecosystem level, it's so vast, and these micro adaptations with a larger shift in climate rates, it's a lot. but now we're in a place where we have tools that are more accessible on the software side, like leveraging AI to be able to model things, get insights, generate, simulate, like all of the things.

[00:33:06] Erum: and to be able to help, collect insights across these scales. I mean, I'm sure you're using software on many different processes, but. Where did you see the biggest leap in your process

[00:33:15] Erum: you're talking about the co scientists, and what is that doing? Is it generating hypotheses? Is it creating experiments? where do you see the most excitement in your world when it comes to using AI in your process or your platform?

[00:33:27] Ashley: Yeah. What's really exciting to me is, Like we were just talking about, we have all this knowledge bubbling to the surface across scales, and it would be so infeasible for any one scientist to link, oh, you know, this genetic change, here that is being studied for this.

[00:33:45] Ashley: purpose in the biotech space actually has these big ecological ramifications what we can do with AI and these software tools is start to, connect the dots between what seem like. an individual scientist focused on an individual goal to be remote data points, or unrelated data.

[00:34:04] Ashley: And we can start to bring that together to create, , a more holistic understanding of how these systems, these work. that's one thing our software co scientist is working to do, is consolidate a lot of the knowledge that exists. And contextualize it. Help us like connect these dots so that we can make more strategic decisions when it comes to r and d.

[00:34:27] Ashley: So from this literature synthesis and hypothesis research goals, setting to r and d management, how do I design better experiments when I'm trying to navigate these organisms that have some of the most complex genomes and also, Are controlled by, 40, 50 different variables in these experiments.

[00:34:47] Ashley: How do I navigate this space efficiently? And this is where, being able to package these tools in a way that's accessible and useful to the scientists who are doing work in the lab every day. our scientists, can help everybody move more effectively in their lane of science. So that's where we're excited about these tools.

[00:35:05] Ashley: I do think there's something important about creating, A specific form factor for these tools and a specific process flow for these tools, that's really niche and specific to the area of science that you're working in. Because science is not a monolith if you're trying to build a process for science, know there are many that are doing that, and they're very effective. but I feel like plant science often, we find the tools, they just don't work for us and it's just not right for our process. And so there needs to be a more targeted approach in this space. And so

[00:35:37] Ashley: that's what we're

[00:35:38] Ashley: working on delivering.

[00:35:39] Karl: And how do you think these tools, might compare to the tools that are developed or have been developed or are being developed say, for agriculture? I know probably people are more focused on how do I. Keep my crop of corn alive in Iowa this time of the year.

[00:35:54] Karl: what's the difference?

[00:35:56] Ashley: I'll preface this by saying I'm not an expert in all the software that exists in in the agriculture space, but, , I think we're on this journey. We have some of these niche tools that have been developed for a really narrow specific application.

[00:36:08] Ashley: I'm sure the big, agriculture, crop breeding companies have their specific tools for understanding how this gene affects this trait. and they have a process that's, well structured deliver that, deliver in the top five row crops or something. But beyond that, it's not really applicable.

[00:36:23] Ashley: or if you have, some farmer growing corn in the field, you might have a specific tool designed for them, to help advise them on when to fertilizer, when to but. it's not a broad plant science tool. But then on the other hand, I feel like we've ping ponged to the other side where now we have a bunch of really generalist science tools coming out.

[00:36:41] Ashley: And for certain aspects of science maybe that will be useful literature review. one such example, When it comes to helping us design better experiments and do better, science. what the requirements are there are gonna vary depending on, what field you're in, what type of science you're doing.

[00:36:57] Ashley: I think we're gonna probably find ourselves as a field of scientists working in ai, migrating back to this middle ground where there's some more structure, to really satisfy.

[00:37:09] Erum: Yeah. Yeah. And agriculture is oftentimes monoculture where you're looking at diversity and you're looking at, again, large ecosystems. If you had, another 20 minutes, I'll talk about how you look at them. Soil microbiomes, and how you take that into consideration when developing seeds, , But. You're in this role, you're hitting this organization. What does the world look like for you in five to 10 years? What is foray doing? What impact has it had? Let's vision.

[00:37:34] Ashley: yeah, in five to 10 years. I want every plant scientist working in bioproduction and agriculture and forestry and academia to be building more effectively. Because they're working with forest new plant operating system.

[00:37:49] Ashley: And so we wanna be powering the next innovations in plant biology and helping to accelerate the field towards the solutions that we need and the timeframes that we need them.

[00:37:59] Ashley: so then we can start to build this regenerative system for humans and for plants. I would invite anybody who hears this call into the wild, if you're thinking about this too, and how to build better, in this space and accelerate plant science. let's talk, let's think together about this.

[00:38:13] Ashley: 'cause this is, is a big challenge.

[00:38:15] Erum: Yeah. Yeah. Plants in space too. Let's not forget

[00:38:19] Erum: space.

[00:38:20] Ashley: Oh yeah. Plant some space.

[00:38:22] Ashley: Yeah.

[00:38:22] Karl: You had, bring the space in there.

[00:38:24] Karl: I.

[00:38:25] Erum: You gotta think about what happens in zero gravity? because we talked to, Evan Bayer about cultivating mycelium zero gravity and that's completely different. Biology accelerates, the replication of cells accelerates in zero gravity.

[00:38:39] Erum: we just came off of going to syn via beta, and that was one big key takeaway. I'm like, oh, things grow faster. Biology moves faster in zero gravity. Interesting. but yeah, I don't know. I always like

[00:38:49] Erum: to throw that

[00:38:49] Ashley: It's wild. Yeah. There's so much we don't know. There's so much we don't know on this planet. And then when you, leave this planet, the world is your oyster. can you still say that if you're in outer

[00:38:57] Erum: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:58] Karl: So to kind of close things out, Ashley, if someone asks, Why should I care about plant cell culture? What do you say to them?

[00:39:06] Ashley: we have plans to thank for, the air we breathe for, the food we eat, the houses we live in, the fuels that power us. plants are. Life. And the only way to sustain that life is by changing the extraction equation. So we need to take less and we need to plant more.

[00:39:24] Ashley: it's a simple equation, but plant cell culture can do that for us. Plant cell culture can help us grow better. that's why it matters. And I always, say to people, whether you know it or not, you are a plant person. So we're all plant people.

[00:39:36] Erum: Yes, we're all planned people. I can't wait to learn more about foray. See what you guys are doing, especially in California, the biodiversity. I'm thinking of commercial applications. That's just me. I would love to have more diverse plants in my house, not just pathos, plants. There's more house plans instead of pathos plans, but it's incredible speaking with you, learning more.

[00:39:55] Erum: I am just very inspired. Thank you so much for coming on the Grow Everything podcast, Ashley.

[00:39:59] Ashley: Likewise. Yeah. Thank you so much. This has been a lot

[00:40:02] Ashley: of

[00:40:02] Ashley: fun.

[00:40:04] Karl: Appreciate it.

[00:40:05] Ashley: Yeah, of course.

[00:40:09] Ashley: Everything. I mean, we just had Memorial Day weekend, so summer is unofficially here. Um, when summer is usually during the summer solstice. That's when is it, when does it start again? What day is that? In June 21st. So that's official start. But hey, look. For all intents and purposes, summer is here for people that are on the schedule of schools and you know, Memorial Day, labor Day is, those are the two indicators.

[00:40:42] Erum: Although it was pretty cold here in Brooklyn, we don't care. You know, it's here. The vibe's back, it's going on. So what about you? How's, how are things going on your end?

[00:41:14] Erum: Oh.

[00:41:55] Erum: Yeah, it was great. I mean, to know everything that's going on in the biotech industry, the latest and greatest, like the, just the innovation that's coming out. Like things are moving so fast, people, we all know that we can all feel it and we have to make some quick decisions on how to leverage different tools and techniques.

[00:42:14] Erum: Um, especially when it comes to biology, it's so complex, but. There's some decomp, complexing happening, and how do you make sure that you're doing, you're, however you're applying by biotech, you're applying it in the smartest way. Um, otherwise maybe your competitors or other people are doing it. If you know you're in, in business, or maybe even if you're just raising fund funding for nonprofit, they're like, oh wait, you kind of missed this aspect of biotech.

[00:42:41] Erum: So I definitely recommend listening to it. I know there's some things that are super innovative, like quantum, I mean. I don't know what affordable quantum computing there is out there, but, um, oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. But there were, um, that was just, you know, the tip of the iceberg and then I felt like a lot of that conversation kept resonating at the different biotech events that we went to after that, which the party keeps going on.

[00:43:08] Erum: Carl, like there is no shortage of biotech events in our world.

[00:43:24] Erum: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:35] Erum: I'm sorry, it's that. Sorry. It's not the embassy. It was a consulate. I'm so sorry. Yeah, I just remember that. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Oh yeah. And then Carl, you headed up a panel at the Argentinian Consulate here in New York City. Why did you do that? What was that event about?

[00:44:02] Erum: Hmm.

[00:44:31] Erum: Okay. Yep, do it. Do it.

[00:44:38] Erum: And then I also have notes from it too. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:46:59] Erum: Yeah, I love the fact that I, so I'll just say that it was a great panel, Carl. I love when you broke out the Spanish. I was like, excuse me, Carl. I was like, hello? It was so good. I was like, yeah, that's some, some, that's some street cred for you, Carl. Um, but some facts I took away was that 70% of the scientists in Argentina are biologists.

[00:47:20] Erum: I. Which I thought was super, super interesting. Um, and also I lo um, it was really interesting to see the dynamic between, uh, what was that name? Cornelia, no Cap. It was interesting to see the dynamic between Cap and Mathias. So Cap, um, the, the, she works for a corporate venture fund called. Syn Ko Sin Ensco, right?

[00:47:49] Erum: Senco, I'm sorry, but sco. Oh my God. Jesus. Okay, so she, yeah, that's what you get for like spelling things. Um, it's S-Y-E-N-S-Q-O. Right? Uh, okay. Well, you say it like it's obvious Carl, but Okay. Yeah, so, but it's a corporate venture fund and. I think that corporate venture funds are very interesting because they have an actual company, they have applications, they're out in the market, they have the expertise versus another, you know, just, I guess a typical venture fund and to me it seems like corporate venture funds.

[00:48:34] Erum: Are really, really need to step up when it comes to investing in biotech companies. And I love that Science Covens is doing that, but we know that there are other companies that are also in this world, um, and things that you wouldn't think of, right? Um, p and g has one Unilever. So these big, you know, um, consumer product, good companies have venture funds.

[00:48:56] Erum: Any corporation might have one. So for those that are raising money, it'd be good to take a look at like, hmm, you know, maybe just look around your house and see what corporation made that thing. And then look to see if they have a venture fund or it can ask your favorite ai. So I thought that I, I love seeing that play out, um, that dynamic between a corporate venture fund and a startup.

[00:49:37] Erum: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:53] Erum: Yeah, well you were the one who was going and you were like, IAM come along. And I'm like, I didn't even prepare for this. Um, and, and so you were all suited up and I was just wearing like a sweater and joggers, whatever. So we go to this event, everyone is wearing like. Fitted nice suits. It was mostly men, but, and all the ladies are wearing like, you know, they're all their corporate gear dresses, blazers.

[00:50:17] Erum: And I just roll up with my doc. Martins be like, yo, what's up everybody? I'm here to party.

[00:50:26] Erum: I,

[00:50:35] Erum: yeah, it was cool.

[00:50:43] Erum: Yeah. And it was good to talk to them, right? And like, these are public market investors, right? So this, these are biotech companies that are in the market already. The public markets, they, they already IPO they're out there. So it was really interesting because I play, you know, wing women for a lot of these entrepreneurs when we're at these events where I try to introduce them to investors.

[00:51:01] Erum: And I was like, we can, you know, we just gotta ask, do you invest in early stage companies? That's it. And if they don't say hi, it's nice to meet you, maybe connect on LinkedIn and make, then just move on. Move on. Because we gotta find out who, where the opportunities are. And for the early stage companies, they are not with the public market investors, but it was cool.

[00:51:20] Erum: I mean it, you know, it was at, um, like on a rooftop and in Manhattan, so amazing views. Well, yeah, yeah. At the nasdaq. Yeah, exactly. Um, and so that was really, really nice. But what about you? What did you think of at the event?

[00:52:17] Erum: Overwhelming in a good way or a bad way.

[00:52:24] Erum: Okay. Because I was like, they're both overwhelming, so, okay.

[00:53:29] Erum: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:46] Erum: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:54:09] Erum: I love it. I just love the fact that Luke and, oh, forgot his other name went on. I love the fact, yeah, I love the fact that Sam and Luke, they formally had a company called Melon Frosts, but now they're working at two different companies, Sam at a stealth and Luke at Cala Dan Bio. So Cala Dan bio represented, I just, I, I mean, how cool is it?

[00:54:29] Erum: It's called BSL, so bio safety level and biosafety levels. The max is four. So we are at bio at BSL five now. So we are in a completely very unsafe environment right now, but. In reality, it was very safe and comfortable. Um, and it was cool because it's, we get to talk about the real, real, right? So like a lot of us have seen each other go through these companies.

[00:54:55] Erum: Now we're at different companies. I mean, I'm at the same one. But, um, and. I think they're very candid, right? They're not just sugarcoating it and going, rah, rah, rah, everything's going well at our companies. There were some people saying like, look, I don't agree with our CEO. They're doing, they're making this decision and I think that we should be doing this, and I don't even know how to talk to this person.

[00:55:14] Erum: And I'm like, okay, well, why don't you know, you have to say it. You should always say what's on your mind, just like you did Carl. With HC mean, right? You're like, look, you know, there's, this is what's going on in the world. You guys didn't really, you guys pretended or you guys were a, attempting to showcase this aspect of AI and bio, but it's so much bigger than what you guys talked about.

[00:55:32] Erum: Um, and these other, you know, organizations are doing it. So same with some of, um, our friends. They're just like, look. I just feel like there's so much more we could do. But then some people are like, you know what? Things are going great. You know? Um, one of them, you know, was like, I really wanna create a podcast in biotech focusing on operations.

[00:55:49] Erum: I was like, hell yeah, that is super important. And I'll, and I was like, look, just talk to Carl and I, we can tell you how to operate. A podcast about biotech operations. Um, you know, but we'll give you the playbook. I mean, we need these voices out there. So if anyone's interested in starting a podcast, as long as it's not called Grow Everything, number two, you know, you, you should definitely go for it.

[00:56:12] Erum: But it was great. I just love that our community here, I great to see how things are growing, how people are, um. You know, uh, people are evolving in their careers and just being friendly and making new friends. It's great. All right, let me transition. Okay. So yes. Um. Okay, so then, so that was really, did you wanna mention, so, so let me see this.

[00:56:37] Erum: So Carl, what did you think of it? Or did you already kinda already gave your thoughts? Right. Okay. All right. All right. And then there's some other cool things happening in New York. Carl, I mean, I know there was something going on The Explorers Club. What was, what was up with that and what's the Explorers Club?

[00:56:57] Erum: Okay. Okay. Okay.

[00:58:48] Erum: Okay with that, let's let Ashley take it away. It is good enough. You have, we are over. It's 10 0 3, by the way. Okay. I told, I say same with Honas. Okay. All right. So, um, I'll kick it off and then let's just go run through this. All right. Um, so Carl, what'd you think of that episode?

[01:00:13] Erum: Yeah, I mean, I, I love the approach. I think the idea too is around, you know, biodiversity, right? Not just one plant can create a whole forest. You really have to think about the whole ecosystem. And, um, one of the things I want, you know, I was, I kind of touched on or wanted to dig deeper into maybe in another episode with Ashley is, you know, how does she look at the seedlings?

[01:00:35] Erum: And then what micro, what does, what does the soil microbiome need to look like in order to, um. In order to support the growth of these seeds and, and what, what is like the mix? Like is there like. Six trees minimum that need to be in a diverse, in like in a co, in an ecosystem where they can start thriving and welcoming other plants and animals and microbes.

[01:01:03] Erum: So I love that. I mean, just, you know, we were talking about thinking from like the DNA level all the way out to like the forest level and putting climate as a variable when the climate shifts. So do the forest ship. They move. I love when she started talking about the, the forest move. Um, so being able to track all of that, um, is really interesting.

[01:01:26] Erum: I would love to see, um, their lab and also their platform. They're talking about, um, what are all the VA variables in there? What are they, um, simulating on their platform? And yeah, go ahead.

[01:02:35] Erum: Right, and it's not just a science project. She's working with companies that are, you know, trying, that are looking to make fiber products, bioactives fragrances. So she's really pushing. All boundaries, right? How do we monetize something like this? How do we ensure that there's value being created for, and not just value in terms of dollars and cents, but value in terms of biodiversity and, um, being able to grow things in a responsible way, right?

[01:03:02] Erum: In a smart, responsible way. So it's great. We need, you know, we love that Ashley's focusing on this. We want. More people focusing on this. That's the purpose of this podcast. We're bringing you all of these incredible people, all these incredible minds, so you are inspired as well. So I mean, I just love it and I can't wait to talk to Ashley again.

[01:04:24] Erum: Yes. That's great. Stay tuned for some, um, stay tuned for our upcoming episodes where we do talk about jury biology and um, you know, we definitely need to put a pin on that. But thanks for listening and that's the pod. Okay.

[01:04:39] Ashley: So good to be here. Thank you for, thank you for welcoming me onto your, to your show.

[01:05:10] Ashley: Yeah, I grew up on the, on the front range and so, you know, front and center where all the action is. A lot of housing development. Every time I go back it's a, it feels like a different place that I'm returning to. Uh, but.

[01:05:51] Ashley: I mean, I think it, in my early life, I, I moved from the De Desert of Arizona to the forest of Colorado. And so that was just like a, a rude awakening for me and my first introduction to like forests and trees. Um, and I was just so in awe of these forest ecosystems. And so I spent a lot of my childhood running around, um, in this forest in my backyard, and.

[01:06:15] Ashley: Not long after, you know, I'd really come to love this place. The housing development started moving in. Um, these forests, uh, that I played in every day were, were starting to get ripped out, uh, from behind, behind our house. And, um, it was, it was challenging to, to watch as a, as a kid, I really wanted to like do something, you know?

[01:06:37] Ashley: Um, I. I would, um, scheme with my scheme with my friend, try to figure out like, Hey, how can we stop this from happening? Uh, but we really felt like we had no agency being children in that stage of our lives. So just watching this destruction take place, uh, was really formative for me and had sort of reverberating effects into my later life.

[01:06:59] Ashley: Um, and then of course, being an incompetent of Colorado, you become really familiar with the concept of gigantic wildfires coming through and, and, you know, wiping out a lot of the forests on many of those. That I, you know, saw burn also have never recovered. Uh, and so it's just been this really transformative thing to watch over the course of my, my life and my experience there.

[01:07:21] Ashley: And so that lingering motivation and, and like problem space is something that drove me ultimately into this, you know, founding of, of for a and, and still is sort of the basis of the problem that we wanna solve.

[01:07:50] Ashley: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[01:08:22] Ashley: Yeah, I, I think, you know, exposure's a big, a big. Factor. You know, in my early life I didn't know anybody that worked with plants or with forest systems. And so I couldn't even conceive of a, of a path to, you know, this, this world where I could have an impact on these systems. Uh, but also in my sort of years growing as a young adult, someone in my family was diagnosed with, uh, with breast cancer and that.

[01:08:51] Ashley: Also hit me really deeply and I felt, you know, whatever I do, I wanna have impact on people and like, help, you know, help those that, that are, are, you know, not in a position to, to help themselves in this moment or, um. And, and so I found myself going down this path towards, towards medicine and I don't have the stomach to be a, a doctor.

[01:09:13] Ashley: So I wound up in this field of engineering and medical research at the intersection of biomedical and mechanical engineering. And so I spent many hours in a lab, uh, working with cells, uh, of the mammalian variety and materials and understanding how they interact and how we can build better systems to create better medical outcomes.

[01:09:32] Ashley: And, you know, worked in, in industry. In the medical device world for a little while before finding my way to, uh, MIT where I did my graduate studies. And ultimately my, my master's degree was focused on building these little microchips where we could insert kinda small pieces of tumor biopsy from an individual and test out different personal, uh, cancer treatments on those, uh, and evaluate the response to try to, you know, move towards a more personalized cancer cancer therapy for.

[01:10:04] Ashley: Um, after my, after my master's though, I, I sort of abruptly changed course. I had a moment to sort of pause and, and reflect and, you know, you have sort of, it was not quite a, a midlife crisis. I call it quarter life crisis and like went off to the farm and like worked on a permaculture farm for a little while and started to see.

[01:10:24] Ashley: I just rekindled my, my passion for plants and I started to see how these really intentionally designed collaborative systems between humans and plants and animals could be fruitful for, for everybody involved. And so it just started me on this path of thinking, you know, about the ways that we interact and engage with our plant systems and how could we redesign this engagement with them to be more regenerative and less extractive as a whole.

[01:10:52] Ashley: So I came back to, uh, MIT with this sort of, these thoughts bubbling in my head and pose this sort of thought experiment like, you know, what could we do, uh, if we could grow differently? And so inspired by, you know. Shortages of, of things we see in the medical space. For example, you know, we, we have a shortage of, uh, kidney kidneys for kidney transplants.

[01:11:18] Ashley: Uh, and there's this interesting, uh, area of work where people are focused on, you know, how can we grow more kidneys without just having to harvest them for more people, which is obviously comes with a lot of, uh, undesirable consequences. Uh, so this field of tissue engineering sort of bubbled up and that was really active at the time when I was, I was studying.

[01:11:36] Ashley: And with that, in my mind I thought, you know, what, if, what if we had sort of organ or tissue engineering alternatives, uh, for, for our plant system so we could grow what we needed in a really targeted way? So I launched into this kind of thought experiment. This what became a physical experiment, I guess, uh, in, in lab grown wood to apply these tissue engineering concepts and use cells, those fundamental building blocks of life that we all sort of learn about through our high school biology classes.

[01:12:06] Ashley: Uh, and use those actually build. Wood outside of, of the tree. And so that just opened the door to this really interesting line of, of research, uh, that I, that I explored for a number of years. Um, and it just, you know, continue. I continued to be enthralled by this question of, you know, if you could redesign any plant process and shape it from the cell up, what could become possible?

[01:12:31] Ashley: And so Lab grown Wood was sort of one example of that. One teaser of what might be possible in that space.

[01:13:24] Ashley: Yeah, I, I'm gonna cheat a little bit and I'm gonna give some more background before I, like, I'll give you, I'll give you the two sentence summary, uh, at the end. But yeah, the, the lab grand grid really opened the door to, uh, you know, to or opened our eyes to some of these other challenges that stood between us, like achieving this vision of growing only what we need, um, and where we were today.

[01:13:47] Ashley: Uh, so it really got us started thinking about. You know, there's this, I, there's this concept of, of problem progression. So you have this massive problem that needs to be solved, a big carry problem that needs to be solved. But before you can solve that problem, you actually have to solve a series of smaller problems that come before it.

[01:14:05] Ashley: So an example would be like, um, you know, you know, if you wanna invent Uber. The first problem you have to, you know, the first problem you have to solve is, okay, well how do we make the internet? You know, so there's this series of problems that need to be solved. And so lab grown wood is sort of like the Uber.

[01:14:21] Ashley: And through that process we sort of recognized, okay, well the internet doesn't exist yet, so now we need to build the internet. Now we need to build the internet. Um, so that's kind of, you know, what led us to a renewed thinking about where we're building and why. Um. So the real problem that we're, we're passionate about today is that, you know, 40% of.

[01:14:42] Ashley: Plant species are threatened with extinction and humans are a driving cause of that. So we, we need these new ways to collaborate with plants to ensure long-term access to these plant products and plant ecosystems that we rely on. So at Forer, we grow harvest free plant products straight from the cell so that we can precisely grow exactly what we need.

[01:15:01] Ashley: Whether that's molecules, materials, seeds, and equipping us all as humans to take less and plant more to support this health of these systems that sustain us. So our secret sauce is figuring new ways to design this growth economically and quickly so that we can get these approaches out the door a lot faster.

[01:15:24] Ashley: Um, and we do this with the help of some of our internally designed tools, a software co scientist that's specifically built to help us navigate this complex world of plant science. And so we use this in tool internally to power development work with partners, building better access to plant products.

[01:15:42] Ashley: Uh, and we're also in the process of rolling the software tool out for broader use by growers and biomanufacturing propagation and regeneration. So that's a long answer. And the, and the short answer is in summary, we, you know, we build things with plant cells and we're good at figuring out how to build things with plant cells, and we can help you be good at it too.

[01:16:03] Ashley: So that's, that's the two sentence summary.

[01:16:30] Ashley: Yeah, exactly. I, I, I mean. Cells are sort of a fundamental input to all of these processes. So whether you wanna grow a whole tree faster, or whether you wanna grow just a part of a tree without having to grow the whole tree, uh, cells are really like the building block of this life. And so one big step in creating faster growing trees, uh, especially in the case of living carbon, would be okay, we have to engineer, um, better genetics.

[01:16:58] Ashley: And we do that at the cellular level, but then somehow we have to turn that cell back into a tree. And that process of going from cell to tree is a huge, we call it regeneration. It's a huge, uh, barrier in delivering a lot of these. Improved more resilient crops into the world. And so that's part of the process that we're looking to, to make a lot easier with our, with our systems.

[01:17:23] Ashley: And by building this more robust and holistic understanding of, of plant science and plant processes.

[01:18:10] Ashley: Yeah. So a lot of people, a lot of people operating in this space are Yeah, are producers. They're like delivering the product at the end. But the process of like getting to that product involved a lot of trial and error and, uh, research and development and money and investment. And, um, eventually, you know, they were able to generate this successful process and so sort of, we're not.

[01:18:37] Ashley: Building products, the scale of the products, but we're building that sort of process. But when we think about, uh, cells and cell systems, we're sort of zooming out a little bit further from just this molecular production space. So. The plant cell is this incredibly versatile agent of production. So the plant cell contains anything, all the information necessary to create any part of that plant or any product of that plant.

[01:19:06] Ashley: Um, so right now in, you know, bio manufacturing, you often see. This one mode of production where the cell is used as a factory. So you isolate the cell from the plant. Uh, you grow, you grow up a bunch of these cells in a sort of disorganized, you know, disorganized collection. Uh, you can feed those cells with nutrient broth in a bioreactor.

[01:19:31] Ashley: And then you can turn on the internal machinery on, in those cells to pump out certain molecules of of interest. So we see this as like, this is the cells as factories model. But at Foray we also see a couple of other models of using cells as agents of production. So the second would be using cells as the physical building blocks for what materials, um, for, uh, delivery or packaging of, of sort of internal components we see.

[01:20:05] Ashley: You know, other companies in plant cell culture playing around in this space. We've obviously done some work in lab grown wood in the past, uh, but we also see people working on fiber production and beyond. This would be the, the cells as building blocks model. And then the third mode of production would be these cells are actually.

[01:20:25] Ashley: The foundation for creating a whole plant or creating a seed, which is a precursor to that whole plant. And so we see these cells as regenerators as well. Uh, so once you're starting from the cell, it's really kind of like quote unquote a, a stem cell. It has all this developmental potential and you can steer it across all these different directions.

[01:20:44] Ashley: So a lot of people are, are specialized, um, into one of these, you know, one of these production processes and. They're focused on the, you know, how do you go from one to 100? How do you scale this and get this out into the world? And at four we're asking the questions, okay, how do we get from zero to one and how do we do that faster so that the people who are really good at getting it from one to 100 can, can really thrive and, and get these product out into the world.

[01:22:05] Ashley: Especially. Yeah.

[01:22:21] Ashley: Yeah. I think what's exciting to me. I think what what's exciting about this space in general is the, the potential of plants and plant cells. Um, I think biotech tends to focus a lot on the microbial, the microbial space or mammalian, uh, world where things are a little bit more developed. Uh, but plants have so much potential and they have this developmental range that.

[01:22:52] Ashley: You know, we can produce from, from the same source so we can produce a wide variety of products, uh, as opposed to engineering a microbe to produce one thing really well. And so I think these are really interesting and complimentary tools, and it's exciting to me to start seeing plant cells, plant cell, and tissue culture, getting more attention and traction as, you know, a complimentary tool in the toolkit of, of biotech.

[01:23:22] Ashley: Um. I think challenges, oh yeah, sorry. No, please. Uh, I was just gonna talk about sort of challenges in the, in the space. Um, yeah, there are a lot of them. Yeah. I think, you know, plant systems are so, are so varied, uh, and that, and the outcomes are so varied or the needs are so varied and so we have. Even though there's a lot of people working in this field, you know, you have some people working over here, uh, you know, building new access to bioactives and medicines for, you know, cosmetics and health and beauty.

[01:23:59] Ashley: You have people over here working on fabricated seeds. You have people over here working on new propagation systems for a particular plant. Um, and this knowledge. That we're developing is really valuable, but it's so distributed and so dispersed and disconnected that we're not like productively moving forward, uh, in the way that we could.

[01:24:21] Ashley: So there are a lot of people like banging their heads against these different walls. Uh, and it turns out, you know, we're all banging our heads against the same wall. And so if we could see that, we could start to connect that learning, that knowledge. Um, and give it context. We could all start sort of moving in the same direction, rowing the same direction, and getting where we need to go a lot faster.

[01:24:47] Ashley: And so that's part of the problem that we're trying solve is like, how do we take, you know. This research on, you know, how do we create rosewood oil from a cell culture instead of, are we seeing it from this endangered tree and this other research on, okay, well how do we propagate rosewood so we can restore these systems to the forest where they, where they live?

[01:25:10] Ashley: Uh, well it turns out, you know, both of those biological systems, both biological. Those sets of biological knowledge are related. Um, so what if we could bring those learnings together and create a more comprehensive understanding of cellular processes and thus achieve better sort of control, um, so we can have these compound effects?

[01:25:42] Ashley: Yeah. Yeah, no, this is exactly, you know, this is exactly what we're, we're passionate about doing and creating this like software platform that can help to bring context to data that can help bring additional understanding to the data that's been developed in the past and help us like fill in the gaps that exist so that we can be more productive as a field in the future.

[01:26:07] Ashley: And so that, that's one thing that we're really excited about this, about this software co scientist tool and RD management tool that we're about to roll out. Um, yeah.

[01:26:42] Ashley: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, we, we have a number of active projects today that I'm really excited about that really showcases the versatility of this process oriented mindset to developing these cell culture systems. So one is. Uh, you know, we're working with a nonprofit out in California that is focused on preserving the biodiversity that exists in the state of California.

[01:27:05] Ashley: Uh, and, and there are some species that have been, you know, recently extinct out there, again, wiped out by enriching housing developments. And so we are working on a path to reintroduce those recently extinct species, uh, into the wild, um, by. Creating a seed from a limited amount of plant material that that is still available.

[01:27:29] Ashley: So we take this plant material, we generate the cells, we turn those cells into embryos, and then we encapsulate those embryos in a sort of nutrient pocket. So in effect, it's a, a fabricated seed. We have the biological component, which is destined to become the plant. And we have the package of, of food to get that embryo through its early days of life and still it starts photosynthesizing for itself.

[01:27:56] Ashley: And so we're building this, um, pathway for de-extinction through fabricated seeds to be able to reintroduce these species. So that wild. So this is one sort of case study and what one thing that becomes one thing that becomes possible when we are able to bring. This type of technology efficiently to a species where we don't have a lot of like plant material or resources to play around with.

[01:28:22] Ashley: You know, this is a rare species, so you kind of have to like, you have to get it right, um, from the, from the beginning. 'cause you don't wanna waste these, waste these resources. So that's where engineering a better process for approaching this will help us be really strategic.

[01:29:21] Ashley: Yeah, so I we're, we're. If you imagine sort of that that cell lives on this landscape of sort of developmental. You know, developmental opportunity. So from that quote unquote stem cell, we could nudge that cell. You know, like in your studies, you would've nudged that cell in the direction of root formation.

[01:29:44] Ashley: So you're convincing that cell through these external signals to become a root cell, or you can convince that cell to become a leaf cell or to just continue to persist as this undefined cell. Uh, but you can also present cell to become an embryo. Which is the precursor to, uh, you know, to a seed and an embryo basically just has this dual ability to form both the roots and the leaves from the same sort of biological mass.

[01:30:16] Ashley: So it's on the same landscape of development where you would've played before. Um, why we're excited about this is. Seed supply is a huge barrier when it comes to achieving our psychological restoration goals. So in the US uh, the US Forest Service is usually only about. Um, restoring about 6% of post, you know, post wildfire restoration sites.

[01:30:50] Ashley: And a big part of that is that we don't have the seed to do that, um, to actually meet those planting goals. And so I. How can we, how can we create access to seed when that seed just like doesn't, you know, it doesn't exist or it's so impractical, collect that we don't have access through natural, you know, natural processes.

[01:31:13] Ashley: Um, so we are focused on, you know, taking a limited amount of biological material so we can take cells from, you know, a little plant biopsy. We can take cells from. Uh, a handful of seeds and turn those into, you know, these embryos, which can make many more seeds. Uh, so we can amplify those seed stores and make sure that restoration takes place, um, in a timeframe where it's still able to be effective.

[01:32:30] Ashley: Yeah.

[01:32:36] Ashley: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:32:53] Ashley: Yeah, so. It's a, it's a great question. Yeah. In the de-extinction world. Okay. Just a, just a put a, a final cap on that. It's, it's such an interesting space right now and I think, yeah, we're thinking about, you know, animals 'cause they're super charismatic, but like these plants, this extinction is happening like.

[01:33:11] Ashley: Now and like, how do we save these species that provide us value today and won't be here tomorrow? And so I think the opportunity to act before, you know, it's 20,000 years later, uh, is really compelling. But it does force people to do really appreciate, appreciate these resources, uh, on. Like in individualized level, we have a lot of like plant blindness.

[01:33:39] Ashley: Like, oh, I still see a lot of green outside, but the health of those plant systems is totally dependent on this, you know? Population, community level collection of these various species that sort of self reinforce and like create this positive environment for all of them. And so even though there's green outside, it doesn't mean that it's a healthy, you know, healthy ecosystem.

[01:34:02] Ashley: And so, yeah, being able to implement these seed technologies to that end is really exciting to us. Um, but in terms of other verticals, so this is, this is our sort of internal passion project is, you know, these, these fabricated seeds and we're. You know, we're looking for more opportunities to, to build and deploy in this space.

[01:34:22] Ashley: But we also do contracted work with with partners in other sectors as well. So as I said, we're like process builders. We build trends zero to one, and we help people discover these new ways of producing goods that we depend on every day. So we have another. You know, client in the fiber products world where we're thinking about, you know, how could we build bio better fibers, um, fibers that don't have to be necessarily harvested from trees, if that supply becomes constrained, uh, but could also have better and superior performance so that we could, you know, um, use less overall.

[01:35:00] Ashley: So this is another interesting line of work. We have done additional work in the production of bioactives or fragrances from a species where we would also, you know, we would alternatively have to like tear down the tree and um. Chop it up and extract it in chemicals. Uh, so just creating these new pathways and really exploring the full realm of this possibility.

[01:35:25] Ashley: But today we, you know, so we work with partners in two ways. One, we're we're trying to enable people and help people build where they are by rolling out the same platform technologies that we use internally so that they can use them internally as well. We recognize the need to, to. Get these solutions out the door as quickly as possible.

[01:35:45] Ashley: And that means we need the experts on the problems best equipped to, to like, create and deploy these solutions. And so that's where we wanna put the power of effective sort of plant r and d in the hands of those people. Uh, so that's through our software system. And then we also, you know, collaborate. Our real scientists come and, uh, work on projects collaboratively with partners who engage us to develop processes together.

[01:36:47] Ashley: Yeah, I think first is, you know, we have a strong and and constant vision to use bio manufacturing to protect and restore ecosystems, and we've been able to find investors who have strong alignment with that vision. And so they're really in it for the long haul and they recognize as we do the potential of this technology to be transformative.

[01:37:08] Ashley: The second is we have a business model that I feel makes sense given the state of maturity of the field. You know, so if we're talking about this problem progression that needs to take place, we are, you know, creating that solution to the first problem that needs to be solved. Um, so it, it makes sense and we'll be able to, to sort of grow as the, as and expand our capabilities as the field continues to mature.

[01:37:35] Ashley: And, and then there's, you know, a history of, of execution and what we've been able to, you know, steadily show as we've been building over the last few years. Um, and just producing consistent results I think builds confidence and trust with those investors that have been along for the ride. Um, but again, I think we, we touched on this before, you know, the unique thing I think about, about Foray is that where.

[01:37:59] Ashley: Most others in the field are sort of product first. We are this sort of platform, first company, and we, we recognize the importance of, you know, others being successful in order, um, for this field to have the impact that we want it to have. So we have this sort of interesting partnership model where success, um.

[01:38:27] Ashley: Success doesn't mean we have success in one product, but it means that we, we are helping drive innovation across a, a wide, a wide range of products, and it maintains this optionality that, that sort of builds resiliency, I guess, into our, our business plan.

[01:39:55] Ashley: Yeah, I mean, so our ultimate, you know, we're, we're not gonna be selling fragrances, so we won't be direct competitors to, to those organizations. But the path that, you know, we recognize client cell culture has value in particular applications and it, and it's gonna be outcompeted by other technologies and other applications.

[01:40:15] Ashley: And so you really do have to be able to do this realistic assessment of like, when is this the right tool for the job? And. Plant cells are valuable when it comes to producing really sort of complex products. Whether those are like really large and complicated molecules or like complicated mixtures of molecules or these like, you know, obviously you're not producing plant embryos from, uh, from yeast.

[01:40:39] Ashley: And so, you know, there are really these well-defined niches where plant cells and plant cell culture will be able to, you know, uniquely. Provide what the customer is looking for, um, in order to get, you know, in order to get to a state where we can prove out that that product can be produced in plant cell culture.

[01:41:00] Ashley: You know, that's, that's the big, like I. That's the big mystery. That's the unknown. Today we have like 450,000 land plants in the world, and you know, we have experimented in cell culture with like a tiny, tiny fraction of them, probably less than a percent, um, probably much less than a percent. Uh, and so that means there's, there are all of these gaps in knowledge and so everything is high risk.

[01:41:27] Ashley: And so how do you start to bring the risk down overall? How do you start to make. Um, these, these like new, uh, new endeavors, more accessible. Uh, and more cost effective because right now it's like a lot of trial and error. It's super artisanal people. You are like, like you said, you have to prove out that it works first.

[01:41:49] Ashley: So you're like throwing in tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars into this process to, to maybe come out with a successful prototype. Maybe you never even create a successful cell line. And that's a reality for a lot of the cell and tissue culture world in plants today. And so that's where. Like, there are a whole lot of pieces along this, um, you know, this production chain that require renovation for plant cells because this is still a new, a new, a new field.

[01:42:20] Ashley: So, you know, going from one to 100, I. Is is hard and there's a lot of innovation required there, but going from zero to one, that's like, that's like the blocker. If you can't get to one, you can't get to 100, you know, and so that's where we're focused, like how do you take an r and d timeline that can be six months or 20 years and cra it all down.

[01:42:43] Ashley: So the upper end of that timeline is always at six months, you know? So how do you make that r and d process? Reliable and accessible and you know, that's what we're focused, that's what we're really focused on.

[01:44:08] Ashley: I think what excites me is. You know, we're, we are starting to see, I mean, with this renewed enthusiasm around plants and our ecological systems and this understanding that, oh, actually, you know, we can't just extract, we have to, we have to manage these systems responsibly. We're starting to see. All of these incredible emerging tools like scientific tools applied to understanding these systems.

[01:44:36] Ashley: So from like the micro scale to the macro scale, our understanding of these plant systems and, and what they can do and what they need to survive is, is maturing at this really exciting rate. And I think, you know, when we start looking from. You know, the epigenetic or genetic level to the ecological level, and we have these sort of multiple perspectives coming together to examine these systems.

[01:45:02] Ashley: We, I hope, will start to appreciate these systems for what they are and understand them in ways that we had never. Have been able to, you know, we're starting to better understand what does biodiversity really mean? You know, what makes a plant adaptable to its ecosystem? What makes an ecosystem resilient to changes in the climate?

[01:45:22] Ashley: Um, and so these are, these are, yeah, all amazing. Insights that are, that are coming to fruition now, thanks to the, the new and emerging tools and the focus of really like dedicated people to this space. Um, what's, you know, we have some, we have some friends, I'll just do like a shameless plug for some of their cool work, but we have some friends at the University of Vermont, um, Steve Kel, Dr.

[01:45:47] Ashley: Steve Keller over there, and, and Dr. Matt Fitzpatrick over at the University of Maryland who are building this incredible understanding of. How forests are adapting in real time and like where in the environment these micro adaptations are happening and, and how you know that knowledge. Can influence, you know, the seeds that we collect and where we use those seeds to have the most resilient and productive forests going into the future as our climates sort of shift and migrate faster than our forests can.

[01:46:20] Ashley: Um, so this is just like one example of some of the cool work that's that's happening that I think will open the doors to, to new ways of, you know, interacting with. These ecosystems. So yeah, that's what I'm, I'm, I'm cautiously optimistic about all this. Yeah. All this engagement that's taking shape.

[01:47:23] Ashley: Yeah, sure. Yeah.

[01:47:42] Ashley: Yeah. What's really exciting to me is, you know. Like we were just talking about, we have all this knowledge sort of coming, bubbling to the surface across scales, and it would be so infeasible for any one scientist to understand, like to link, oh, you know, this genetic change, uh, here that is being studied for this.

[01:48:04] Ashley: You know, purpose in the biotech space actually has these big ecological ramifications and, and so what we can do with AI and these software tools is start to, you know, connect the dots between these, what seem like. You know, to an, to an individual, individual scientist focused on an individual goal to be like remote data points, um, or unrelated data.

[01:48:29] Ashley: And we can start to like, bring that together to create, uh, a more holistic understanding of how these systems, these work. Uh, so that's one thing our, our software co scientist is, is working to do, is consolidate a lot of the, the knowledge that exists. And contextualize it. Help us like connect these dots so that we can make more strategic decisions when it comes to, to r and d.

[01:48:56] Ashley: So yeah, from, from this sort of literature synthesis and hypothesis research goals, setting to like r and d management, how do I design better experiments when I'm trying to navigate these organisms that have some of the most complex genomes and also, you know, are. Are controlled by, you know, 40, 50 different variables in these experiments.

[01:49:20] Ashley: How do I navigate this space efficiently? And this is where, you know, being able to package these tools in a way that's accessible and useful to the scientists who are doing work in the lab every day. Like our scientists, uh. Can, can help everybody move more effectively in their lane of of science. So that's kind of where we're excited about these tools.

[01:49:44] Ashley: I do think there's something important about like creating, I. A specific form factor for these tools and a specific like process flow for these tools, uh, that's really niche and specific to the area of science that you're working in. Because science is, science is not a, a monolith you know? And so if you're trying to build a process for science, you might, I don't know.

[01:50:11] Ashley: I know there are many that are doing that, and they're very effective. Um, but I feel like plant science often, like we find the tools, they just don't, they just don't work for us and it's just not right for our process. And so there needs to be a more targeted approach in this space. And so that's what we're working on delivering.

[01:50:27] Ashley: I.

[01:50:51] Ashley: I'm not, so, I, I'll preface this by saying I'm not an expert in all the software that exists in the, in the agriculture space, but, um, I think. Yeah, you have specific tool. You, I think we're on this journey. We have some of these niche tools that have been developed for a really narrow specific application.

[01:51:10] Ashley: So, you know, I'm sure the big, you know, agriculture, crop breeding companies have their specific tools for understanding how this gene affects this trait. Uh, you know, and they have a process that's, that's sort of well structured to. To deliver that, deliver in the top five row crops or something. But beyond that, you know, it's not really applicable.

[01:51:32] Ashley: And so, or if you have, uh, you know, some farmer growing corn in the field, you might have a specific tool designed for them, uh, to help advise them on when to fertilizer, when to water, uh, but. A again, they don't really like transcend the, like, sell to eco, you know, it's not a broad plant science tool. But then on the other hand, I feel like we've sort of like we've, we've like ping ponged to the other side where now we have a bunch of like really generalist science tools coming out.

[01:52:02] Ashley: Um, and for certain aspects of science maybe that will be useful literature review. Um, what is, you know, one such example, uh, but. When it comes to helping us design better experiments and do better, do better science. Like what, what the requirements are there are gonna vary depending on, you know, what field you're in, what type of science you're doing.

[01:52:25] Ashley: And so, uh, yeah, I think we're gonna probably find our, ourselves as a field of scientists working in ai, sort of migrating back to this middle ground where there's like some loose structure, some more structure, um, to really satisfy.

[01:53:16] Ashley: I think in, yeah, in, in, in five to 10 years. You know, I want every plant scientist working in bioproduction and agriculture and forestry and academia to be building more effectively. Because they're working with forest a, you know, plant, new plant operating system. And so we wanna be powering the next innovations in plant biology and like helping to accelerate the field towards the solutions that we need and the timeframes that we need them.

[01:53:45] Ashley: So, yeah, so then we can start to build this regenerative system for humans and for plants. And so, yeah, I would invite anybody who hears this, hears this call into the wild, you know, if you're thinking about this too, and like how to build better, uh, in this space and accelerate plant science. Let's, let's talk, let's think together about this.

[01:54:04] Ashley: 'cause this is, you know, this is a big, this is a big challenge.

[01:54:12] Ashley: Oh yeah. Plant some space. Yeah.

[01:54:30] Ashley: Yeah.

[01:54:48] Ashley: It's wild. Yeah. There's so much We don't, I mean, there's so much we don't know. There's so much we don't know on this planet. And then when you, when you leave this planet, you know the world is, the world is your oyster. Can, can you still say that if you're in outer space? I dunno. But uh, yeah.

[01:55:14] Ashley: Yeah, I think, you know, we have plans to thank for, you know, the air we breathe for, the food we eat, the houses we live in, the fuels that power us. So, you know, plants are. Life. And the only way to sustain that life is by changing the extraction equation. So we need to take less and we need to plant more.

[01:55:34] Ashley: And it's a simple, it's a simple equation, but plant cell culture can do that for us. Plant cell culture can help us grow better. Um, and that's why, that's why it matters. And I always, always say to people, you know, like, whether you know it or not, you are a plant person. So you know, we are, we're all plant people.

[01:56:16] Ashley: Likewise. Yeah. Thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. Yeah, of course. All right. Anything else you need from me, feel free to feel free to reach out and I'll be, be on top of it responding. But thank you so much. It was so nice to meet.