178. Pretty in Pigments: Jesse Adler Colors the Future with Pitri

Karl [00:00:00] Hi, Erum. What's going on?

Erum [00:00:00] Karl? I’ve been frolicking around Brooklyn because, wow—spring is in full blossom. It’s just so insane. I feel so blessed to live right next to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden that I can just dip in and see amazing trees in all their blossoming glory. That’s why I’m—if you’re watching video—you’ll see I’m rocking some floral attire here to celebrate the season.

Erum [00:00:00] It’s incredible.

Karl [00:00:00] Yeah. So here we are on the Grow Everything podcast, where we talk about how biology is changing all industries. And it is spring in Brooklyn. It’s a magical time. You described it as being everything is in high definition. I’m wearing a T-shirt because it’s very warm right now, and there is something magical.

Karl [00:00:40] I mean, it’s April—of course it should be spring. We should be talking about this in March, but March was freezing.

Karl [00:01:00] And I just love seeing the trees explode with the flowers, and then going into the park—and like you, you went to the Botanic Gardens, which is on the other side of Prospect Park—seeing how many people just show up outside on those sunny days to take pictures of the trees.

Karl [00:01:20] Like you would think that no one’s ever seen a flower before, but it basically stops traffic.

Erum [00:01:30] Stops traffic. People don’t just take pictures of trees—they get dressed up, they get their umbrellas, those Japanese umbrellas or those tiki umbrellas, and they’re doing some amazing photo shoots.

Erum [00:01:45] And right now, actually, at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, they have the Cherry Tree Esplanade, and it’s popping. It’s popping. And everyone’s just sitting underneath the cherry blossoms, just enjoying life—kids running around.

Erum [00:02:05] And not just the cherry blossoms—’cause those are, you know, nice pink blossoms—but all around they have beautiful flowers and tulips, just so many different colors. And because this is our bio dye series—we’re talking about colors for the next couple weeks—it’s just so inspirational.

Erum [00:02:25] And I get so excited because I’m like, that could be a color of some gummy bears. There’s like dark—just dark purple color. Like, when you look at it with your eyes, you’re like, “What?” It can’t compute—especially when the sun’s falling on it.

Erum [00:02:45] I went in the early evenings, like as the sun was setting, so it just made the colors so much more rich and gorgeous looking. But every color that I look at in nature, I’m like, it could be made through biotechnology.

Erum [00:03:05] They’re just—we’re making—and we can have it. We can be eating it, we can be putting it on our bodies, we can be putting it on our furniture or paints or whatever. These colors can be reproduced. So we’re definitely gonna deep dive more into the world of bio dyes.

Karl [00:03:25] Yeah. All right.

Karl [00:03:30] So speaking of walking around, there’s a couple of news things I wanted to cover. Did you see this Allbirds AI pivot?

Erum [00:03:40] I don’t get it, Karl. Wow. When I first heard about Allbirds AI, I thought it was like—they introduced an AI customer service bot that was acting funny.

Erum [00:03:55] And I’m like, “Okay.” But then I heard the news story and I’m just like, wow. I want to change my name to Rum AI and see how much more money I can make.

Karl [00:04:10] Con AI, con AI.

Erum [00:04:12] Con AI. Yeah.

Karl [00:04:15] Exactly. That’s a shout-out to our friend Raza, too.

Erum [00:04:20] Yeah, I know. Con AI. Yeah, that’s insane. Karl, you want to give us a—

Karl [00:04:30] All right, so the story was that Allbirds did a pivot. They said they were gonna rebrand themselves—NewBird AI.

Karl [00:04:45] And it’s a bit of a story because Allbirds was known for being this shoe company. They made these terrific wool shoes. I never bought them, but they were very trendy.

Karl [00:05:00] And their stock price had dropped like 90%—more than 90%. So someone comes along, puts a bunch of money into it, and says they’re gonna turn it into an AI company.

Karl [00:05:20] The stock soars almost 600% in a day. So total meme stock territory.

Karl [00:05:30] And a lot of people were like, “Why are you doing this?” And then, of course, the stock fell like 500% the next day. So it’s basically the market correcting itself.

Karl [00:05:45] I see it as being a crazy financial engineering story, and there’s a lot of these things going on all the time.

Erum [00:05:55] Wait—so did NewBird AI rug the public?

Karl [00:06:00] Yeah.

Erum [00:06:02] Is that what just happened? I don’t know—I mean, I didn’t follow it. How did it get so high? Is that the public putting money in and all of a sudden the core investors took their money out?

Karl [00:06:15] I think that’s probably the case. I’m looking at the Bloomberg story right now, and it just says their stock sank after the company announced a pivot after it had soared more than 500–600%.

Karl [00:06:30] And people have expressed skepticism about the company’s pivot and the actual reaction, calling it more like a meme stock. So yeah—meme stock. They rugged the public. Someone ended up making some money off that. That’s just the way these things work.

Erum [00:06:50] Yeah. And then speaking of crazy valuations, you had this other story about a new—actually a biopharma company that’s fairly new—that has gotten this crazy valuation. Talk a little bit about that.

Karl [00:07:05] Yeah. So it’s actually their IPO—this company Kyra, K-A-I-L-E-R… Calera.

Karl [00:07:15] They had one of biotech’s biggest IPOs. Let’s just put it into perspective: this is a $600 million IPO. We should compare it to SpaceX’s predicted $2 trillion IPO. It’s orders of magnitude bigger.

Karl [00:07:30] So big biotech IPO is still very successful for the biotech industry. And there were two reasons I flagged it. Number one was the number. Number two is this company has an interesting business model in that they in-license drugs from China.

Karl [00:07:50] And the drugs that they have the furthest along are gonna be competing against the GLP-1s that have made Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly into basically trillion-dollar companies—the first in biopharma.

Karl [00:08:05] Investors were really interested in this model. And like you said, the company was very new—this is a two-year-old company. They in-licensed these drugs from China. The drugs are in Phase 3 trials, so they’re pretty far along and apparently are doing very well, and so they went public for $600 million.

Karl [00:08:25] Congratulations to them.

Erum [00:08:30] Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. A lot of acceleration happens in drug discovery in China. They really have a machine there to get through the drug development process very quickly. Everyone’s lined up. It’s actually very incredible to witness.

Erum [00:08:45] Not that I’ve been to China to witness it, but hearing from a lot of biotech founders and just obviously keeping our finger on the pulse—it does make a lot of sense.

Erum [00:09:00] We do hear rumblings of the GLP-1 excitement fading a bit. A lot has to do with the fact that as soon as you get off these drugs, the weight gains back.

Erum [00:09:10] GLP-1s—what they do, of course, is trick your mind into not wanting to eat—something along those lines. So then when you’re off of it, your mind’s like, “Okay, I’m hungry again.”

Erum [00:09:25] But there are other types of supplements and drugs for sure that can influence other pathways when it comes to your metabolism. And we talked about supplement—not a little bit. We had a whole episode a couple of weeks ago where we interviewed Damien Perrin of Exosomes.

Erum [00:09:45] And they have a spinout called NCTX, and their supplement is positioned to do metabolic restoration—to be able to really use your own body and use your metabolism and boost your metabolism in a way, I guess you can say, to use energy that comes from food that you eat much more efficiently.

Erum [00:10:05] So there’s lots of different ways to approach obesity. So this is very interesting that Kyra is here and now IPO’d and is going after this market of people who need to address obesity and want to thin out because there’s the disease, but then there’s the last 10 pounds that people want to just knock out.

Erum [00:10:30] Anything with obesity—I always think of this graying between pharma and consumer. I’ll say like the GLP-1s, even though it’s always needed a prescription to get them, it was much easier when they had this off-label use.

Erum [00:10:50] So it wasn’t just for diabetes; it was also for people that did have a few extra pounds, and their doctor was like, “Yeah, sure. I can write your prescription. It’s generally safe, so here you go.”

Erum [00:11:05] And everyone was on. And then, you know, people are like, “All right, how much am I gonna inject myself?”

Erum [00:11:15] And then the GLP-1s—they came out with a pill. So there’s now pill form. Was that easy for someone to take a pill every day? Maybe. But then maybe that market ends up getting maxed out, and so now we need other approaches to obesity.

Karl [00:11:35] I think one thing that the GLP-1s have done—and I’d love for someone to correct me—I feel like it’s made it much easier for people to get used to the idea of injecting themselves with peptide.

Karl [00:11:50] And that, in turn, there’s been this interest in peptides. We’ve talked about it in the past. I’ve been having issues with my shoulder. I went to go see a specialist and she’s like, “Oh, we’ve got a great peptide stack, but I don’t think you need that yet. We’re gonna do other interventions first.”

Karl [00:12:10] And our friend Elliot Roth, ex of Spara, who we had interviewed early on, talked a lot about the peptides that people are taking for health.

Karl [00:12:25] And we talked about it six or seven months ago—New York Times front page article, New York Magazine article—“Living on Peptides” is great. And I think that that has all come from this comfort with the GLP-1s.

Karl [00:12:45] But I think also the thing about the GLP-1s is we’re seeing a lot of people saying it’s a big experiment. You accurately pointed out that people gain their weight.

Karl [00:12:55] There’s also muscle loss and bone density loss, so there’s a lot of things that happen on these drugs. But I think the bottom line is people feel healthier and better when they’re not obese.

Karl [00:13:10] And I think that the after effects are something we’re just gonna have to see how that plays out over the years.

Erum [00:13:20] Right. Yeah, absolutely.

Karl [00:13:25] All right, so I just had one more news item. We don’t usually do this many, but this one caught my eye. Again, these are all biopharma related. We don’t usually talk about biopharma that much here on Grow Everything, but you just came back from Spain.

Karl [00:13:45] I was in Spain last summer, and of course I see Spanish news all the time. I saw that Spain was investing $200 million in Boston biotech, and I found this to be interesting because a lot of biotech companies in Boston—being the world capital of biotech—has every company in the world. Every big pharma has a lab there.

Karl [00:14:05] And yet there’s companies who are leaving. We know of companies who’ve left Boston because it’s so expensive. They moved to New York where there’s lab space and it’s actually cheaper to be here than it is to be in Boston.

Karl [00:14:20] But Spain has chosen to invest $200 million in Boston biotech because what they see is a way of creating this international bridge between the technologies that Boston has developed and maybe things that are lacking in Spain.

Karl [00:14:40] Even though Spain has a highly educated population, and there is some very interesting work going on. In fact, we had interviewed Josh Robinson of Cocoon Bioscience pretty early on. That’s a biomanufacturing company in northern Spain, in the Basque Country, that is using moth larvae as bioreactors.

Karl [00:15:00] So that was super interesting.

Karl [00:15:05] But a signal like this IPO—I hope this IPO for Calera is a signal that biotech winter is finally gonna thaw. And the fact that capital is pouring into Boston from another country is also, I think, a good signal for biotech in general. What’s your thought, Erum?

Erum [00:15:25] I’m curious to know if this $200 million is exclusively for biopharma, or would they open it up to the broader biotech opportunities that we talk about here on the podcast.

Erum [00:15:40] Obviously there’s biopharma drugs, but there’s obviously supplements and everything else that we talk about here. So it’d be interesting to see if they would either share in some of that or invest some of that into other non-pharma applications—or maybe invest more and have a different fund for non-pharma.

Erum [00:16:05] But here we are now back to the world of non-biopharma, and our bio dye series is in full effect. We had our episode last week, which was a replay of our interview with Ori Conn of And, and today we are interviewing Jesse Adler of Petri.

Erum [00:16:25] And Jesse, to me, is a kindred spirit. We both studied sciences—biochemistry. Jesse studied biomolecular sciences, which we’ll talk about. We’re both passionate about biomanufacturing. We both live in Brooklyn. Jesse was in London and now lives in Brooklyn. And we were also in the same sorority, Delta Phi Epsilon.

Erum [00:16:50] So you’ll hear a little rah-rah-rah in the beginning of this interview. But what Jesse is focusing on is partnering with fungi to grow vibrant natural colors to replace synthetic and animal-derived colorants, which are common in the world of beauty today. So Jesse’s going to market focusing on the world of beauty and personal care products.

Erum [00:17:15] But with that, let’s hear our interview with Jesse Adler of Petri.

Erum [00:17:25] Jesse Adler, welcome to the Grow Everything podcast. I’m so excited to finally have you on. Yay.

Jesse [00:17:32] Yay. I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Erum [00:17:36] Yes. It’s about time, ’cause we’ve known each other for quite some time. I think it’s actually been less than a year, but we’ve been seeing each other at multiple events.

Erum [00:17:50] There was a lot of cool ones that were about biotech at large, but about fungi, about entrepreneurship, and just biology happening in New York City.

Erum [00:18:05] And so we’ve hung out, and it turns out that you and I are part of the same sorority—Delta Phi Epsilon. Woo.

Karl [00:18:15] Yeah, I couldn’t join that. Sorry.

Erum [00:18:18] Sorry, Karl. I don’t want to make you feel—but you know, it’s exclusive, right?

Erum [00:18:25] So go deeper. See, you know the slogan. Our mascot is a unicorn. That’s why I did this. Which is cool too, because entrepreneurship unicorn is a billion-dollar company—so you go, “Hey, wow, it’s all coming together.”

Karl [00:18:45] Let’s go.

Erum [00:18:46] All right, let’s go.

Jesse [00:18:48] He really does.

Erum [00:18:50] Yes. So, Jesse, I want to know a little bit about how you got to where you are, because you have this background in biomolecular science. You went to material design and you worked at Pangaia, which I didn’t know until we did some more research about you and your past and your experience.

Erum [00:19:10] And I was like, “Oh, wow—that’s cool.” So we’d love to talk about that.

Erum [00:19:18] And now you’re here at Petri, and you’re looking in fungi to make color. Can you talk to us about how you arrived here and what was your curiosity to becoming a founder of a company?

Jesse [00:19:35] Starting at the beginning of everything, I’ve always had this drive towards being a maker and more towards that creative space, but also so in love with the sciences and just the way that we can understand our world around us through science, I think is super magical and just so interesting.

Jesse [00:19:55] There’s always more to know and more to discover, and we’re only scratching the surface. Even for the hundreds of years we’ve had some breakthrough innovations.

Jesse [00:20:10] And at the same time, it seemed as if those needed to be disparate paths of study. So in my bachelor’s, I was studying biomolecular science at the University of Michigan, but also looking for opportunities that I could do more creative things.

Jesse [00:20:25] Growing up, I loved sewing my own clothes and designing my own garments and bedding and everything—just making. And how can I then bring science into that?

Jesse [00:20:40] So ones that I’d even share with you guys before were like these science art projects where I would try to put organic chemistry properties into a pair of shoes as a method of storytelling to all the people who didn’t take organic chemistry—of chirality: your hands are the same, but not—and things like that.

Jesse [00:21:00] Or how can we look at the world of art through a scientific lens? When the orbital model of atoms was being developed, you see that reflected through Salvador Dali’s work.

Jesse [00:21:15] All of those spaces I’ve always loved, and I really felt so lost in the sciences as someone with that interdisciplinary passion, because at least in the time and space that I was doing my studies, it was very clear that you were either going to go to medicine or to pharma, and there wasn’t really in between.

Jesse [00:21:35] Even the material science course curriculum was for steel and concrete almost exclusively, and I was interested in more of that in-between space.

Jesse [00:21:50] And when I found the world of biodesign and discovered all of the amazing innovation that had already been done, it was such an unlock for me.

Jesse [00:22:05] So I really wanted to explore those spaces and get back to that creative side of myself. And that’s really what led me to London and opened the door for all of that path to come through.

Jesse [00:22:20] And that path really blossomed as I was working at Pangaia alongside my studies at Central Saint Martins. I was not only learning about how design can be implemented into real-world material applications, but also how I could then create it into fashion product through a wonderful emerging brand.

Karl [00:22:45] That’s amazing. Convergence is the name of the game these days. Somewhere you had described the work you’ve done as working through a molecular worldview, because we’re constantly interacting with our environment—there’s a give and take.

Karl [00:23:00] How does that philosophy shape the way you think about something that is as everyday as color?

Jesse [00:23:10] First and foremost, that worldview has totally shattered the way that I view everything around us. I think it’s so interesting to consider the fact that our brains love to show solid lines and barriers between things like here is skin and here is chair, and those are separate, and there are borders.

Jesse [00:23:30] And when you think on a molecular level, everything’s always random collisions—always moving. And that’s the beauty of how our world comes to be.

Jesse [00:23:45] But those random collisions mean that these two are interacting. And what is that interaction? That’s something that we often have the blissful ignorance to not think about.

Jesse [00:24:00] So now that I’ve thought about it, the glass is shattered—you can’t put it back together. I can’t unthink it. And I see it coming to light, especially about what I consume personally—what do I put on my body, in my body, around my body? And how does that contribute to my own health, to the health of the people around me?

Jesse [00:24:25] And really, I can imagine it really annoys the people who have gone shopping with me in the past number of years because I’m always taking a bottle and looking at the ingredients label or digging around a garment to find the composition and then judging it based on that, because it does matter.

Jesse [00:24:45] And it’s really on the level, particularly with color. As we think about color as something so ubiquitous in our world—almost to the point where people forget that color is added.

Jesse [00:25:00] As someone who works in the world of color, I’m often asked, “Great, that’s cool—what is color used in?” And I love that question because it feels so funny to me, because it’s everything. Everything has color in it.

Karl [00:25:15] Seems like a silly question. What does it get put into? Look around, dude.

Jesse [00:25:20] But you don’t know until you know.

Erum [00:25:25] In your eyes. But they might think it’s inherent in the product—like in the material or in the thing—versus added, right?

Jesse [00:25:35] And it’s so crazy, ’cause even those colorants have chemistry, and that chemistry interacts with us—and especially coming to light in the US now more popularly—that interaction can sometimes be negative.

Jesse [00:25:50] So it’s important that we really deeply think about not only what color choice are we making of a product, but what is the colorant that then defines that color choice?

Erum [00:26:05] Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so you’re speaking to the synthetic dyes, and the concerns and the research that has surfaced on some of the potential risks to human health, to animal health, to environment.

Erum [00:26:20] Can you talk a little bit about that before we start talking about how you arrived at a solution—frame the problem a little bit more in terms of what are the challenges of synthetic dyes and what’s happening?

Jesse [00:26:35] Ooh. A big one. Okay. Dyes are not my specialty, but around the 1850s, synthetic dyes were produced accidentally for the first time.

Jesse [00:26:50] And it was in that moment that material industries started to visibly change because we could not just depend on plants and minerals and certain insects for color—we could then manufacture it.

Jesse [00:27:05] And there was very little investigation between that point until around the ’60s or ’70s in the US. Color was just kind of seen as like, “Well, it colors it—great,” and very little consideration of how that compound interacts with us.

Jesse [00:27:25] I found it really interesting. I came prepared with books, but—Wicked Dyes? To Dye For? (D-Y-E.) She’s much better at going into the history.

Jesse [00:27:40] But one of the cases that really struck me was these beautiful green gloves that were used in Victorian England, and people’s hands were burning and blistering from wearing those gloves.

Jesse [00:27:55] Or even—not that it’s a colorant—but the lore of the Mad Hatter: the mercury in the hats.

Jesse [00:28:05] It’s all about how the structure and aesthetics of the products we want to create can sometimes be at odds with the materials we use to create them.

Jesse [00:28:20] But I often find that it’s not necessarily that we’re ignoring the downside or the risk, but that it’s the best thing that we have at that moment.

Jesse [00:28:35] And so it was the best use—the best performing dye for these green gloves happened to also have this terrible downside, but they still used it because they didn’t have any alternative to get that beautiful color.

Jesse [00:28:50] And at the end of the day, humans are as we are—we love beautiful colors in our world and around us, and that’s really not gonna change.

Jesse [00:29:05] So what has to change is: what are the best-in-class colors, and how do we make sure that they actually work well but also don’t harm us or our planet?

Erum [00:29:20] Yeah. Yeah. I want some green Victorian gloves. They sound really fancy, and I love green. I want to bring that back—with safe colors.

Karl [00:29:35] Jesse, give us your approach to pigments. If someone was to look at your colors, which come from fungi, what would they see, feel, experience? What would be different compared to those beautiful Victorian gloves?

Jesse [00:29:55] If I could have it all, they would see nothing differently, but they would appreciate it so much more.

Jesse [00:30:05] As the end user, when we’re at scale and all of these different innovative solutions work and are proliferating the market to the point where artificial dyes are no longer the incumbent, I would love to see that there’s almost no thought from the user that this is different.

Jesse [00:30:25] That this is valued is something that’s less performative than the synthetics, as something that has compromise and drawbacks. And instead, it’s something that is valued for its own right as a beautiful colorant.

Jesse [00:30:45] And that it’s not only stunning, but people can empathize with the story of where that comes from and the provenance of how did this material get here and why is it so freaking cool that nature produced it.

Jesse [00:31:05] It’s so much more than it’s just an ingredient. And we’re seeing this ingredient storytelling across different industries, and as an ingredients person, I love it.

Jesse [00:31:20] It makes me feel like this is the time for this type of revolution—that people are starting to care about what goes into products and how things got here.

Jesse [00:31:35] And so my goal would be: how do we make something that isn’t judged purely based on its performance against a synthetic, but that it is valued for its own right and its own beauty and has the emotional storytelling of like, “This is really cool.”

Erum [00:31:55] Yeah. That’s a great approach. I love that.

Erum [00:32:00] So let’s talk about tinkering. You’re a creator—you love to create stuff. You started experimenting in a makeshift lab in your backyard.

Erum [00:32:10] Can you share a moment from those early experiments where something unexpected happened—or even if it was a failure, but it pointed you toward a breakthrough—as you’re making these dyes from fungi?

Jesse [00:32:25] So in those early days, I was blessed with the design studio, which is a wonderful place to do a lot of different types of experimentation. Chemistry is not one of those—particularly organic chemistry—not the space for it.

Jesse [00:32:45] So in order to do those experiments—because that is how science works—you gotta do science experiments with science materials.

Jesse [00:32:55] Getting that lab together in my back garden in London looked very Breaking Bad.

Jesse [00:33:05] And my sweet London neighbors looking down over my back garden, seeing vials of blue and red and yellow—and if you’ve ever heard a stir bar stirring in glassware, now imagine that there’s seven of them stirring at the same time. It’s loud. It’s noticeable.

Jesse [00:33:25] But at that stage we didn’t have a lot of time to do deep material investigative experimentation. It had to be quick enough to get to the—I mean, it was only like a couple of days that I could actually do the extractions once I had my hands on the organisms.

Jesse [00:33:45] So I just threw everything at the wall and saw what sticks because a lot of these strains had never been investigated for their applications in beauty and beauty materials.

Jesse [00:34:00] And how do we formulate from an extracted colorant into something that can be a drop-in solution to a lipstick or a sun cream or a lotion or what have you?

Jesse [00:34:15] So I expected everything to fail, and that was the fun part—when things didn’t fail.

Jesse [00:34:25] You know, that one time I dried my black colorant—I left it in the oven. I was like dehydrating it in the oven, ’cause I don’t have any sort of fancy dehydrating tools. And time was short, so work with what you’ve got.

Jesse [00:34:40] Left it in the oven too long—suddenly it was a little bit sparkly. Well, that was fun.

Jesse [00:34:50] Or when I was doing my hybrid lab-studio residency in the Netherlands, I was looking to see how I could take these colorants and apply them to artist materials—particularly paints—and studying the craft of paint making.

Jesse [00:35:05] And it was through that that I was able to experiment with going from kind of a more amorphous red colorant and trying to turn it into a solid, and by doing that I created purple.

Jesse [00:35:20] Interesting. Wow.

Jesse [00:35:25] So it was a lot of the surprise and delight of the process along the way that is craft-led and learned through the making—which, as a scientist, was very hard for me at first to let go and let it be guided by, and then track back to understand why something happened and how we can replicate that.

Karl [00:35:50] That’s amazing. Listening to you, Jesse, it’s so clear how passionate you are. And we talked about how color is treated as something that’s aesthetic, and people don’t even realize that colors or dyes are added to make something look a certain way.

Karl [00:36:05] Your work suggests that it’s not just material but very biological. How do you reframe that idea of color as being something much more fundamental than most people think it is?

Jesse [00:36:20] So, to your question, I think it’s almost easier to reframe how people understand color than it is something that’s not visibly apparent—especially in the beauty world. So many other chemistries are either clear or milky white or just not so visible.

Jesse [00:36:40] And color is something that’s very clear for people to understand because you see it, and so that almost helps a little bit.

Jesse [00:36:50] But what I find super interesting is that the phenomenon of color is our visual systems responding to the reflection of light.

Jesse [00:37:05] And when you think about how color appears in nature, it’s not about looking pretty. Ladybugs aren’t red because they think it looks cute.

Jesse [00:37:15] And all of the different colors that appear—especially with these fungi—are always for a function. And that function sometimes has a chemical function. Sometimes it’s “please don’t eat me.” But sometimes it’s about oxidative stress or UV protection or antimicrobial or antifungal—sometimes as well.

Jesse [00:37:40] And from the organism’s perspective, it’s all function and always function. But it just so happens that the complex chemistry of that compound reflects light in a way that makes it turquoise. That’s incredible.

Jesse [00:38:00] And so if we can reframe that these colors are so much more than they appear—that they’re not just a visual phenomenon—it is truly a structure that’s been purposefully designed by nature for a purpose, and just so happens to look really cute for us.

Erum [00:38:20] Yeah. I love that.

Erum [00:38:25] I want to talk a little bit about your experience at Pangaia because it’s there where you saw firsthand the gap between a sustainable intent and the material reality.

Erum [00:38:35] What was the biggest disconnect you observed, and how did that shape what you’re building now?

Jesse [00:38:45] A lot of them. I think Pangaia is the coolest spot to explore how material innovation can be launched into real-world product. And it was such a wonderful learning experience to be a part of that.

Jesse [00:39:05] And there were, as a part of that learning experience, so many moments where there was a gap between lab bench and launch, and so many different factors play into that.

Jesse [00:39:20] One of them could be the expectations of fashion for a material that, when something is an emerging and breakthrough—for example, water repellent—we might be able to secure, I don’t know, a couple gallons of it, but certainly not enough for thousands of products to be released with that.

Jesse [00:39:45] Scale is everything. And at those early scales you can only get your hands on so much. Especially with new fibers that are coming out, it’s really hard to get even a spool.

Jesse [00:40:00] So to make one garment alone not only takes so much time, but also energy, money, investment, patience. And those expectations can be really difficult in the context of a fast-moving space like fashion or CPG, when they want everything yesterday, and at the price that they want it, and they want it to be the exact same thing every single time.

Jesse [00:40:25] With no variation, because variation is a consumer risk—someone says, “Well, my track pants are a little bit different colored than the hoodie is, and I’m supposed to wear them as a set.” But there’s a little variation.

Jesse [00:40:45] And from one perspective we can empathize with the material—“Well, yeah, we’re still trying to figure it out as an industry.” But at the same time, from the consumer’s perspective, of course they want it to be the same color. That makes sense.

Jesse [00:41:05] So I think that tension is something that all material innovators in the product space are keenly aware of and tackling.

Jesse [00:41:15] Another has to do with judging a material—particularly judging a bio-based or natural material—against a synthetic one.

Jesse [00:41:30] If you look at the problem from where most people do—leather versus a leather alternative—we would hope that the leather alternative behaves like animal leather.

Jesse [00:41:45] But when you look at it from a scientific perspective, the actual molecular structure of the leather alternative is so inherently different from the animal leather that, of course, it’s gonna behave differently. But it doesn’t mean that has any less value or purpose in the material world.

Jesse [00:42:10] It just means we need to think about it differently: what is this new material best at doing, and how can we then position that into products where it can shine, as opposed to be compared to something that it will never achieve, ’cause it’s just chemically not that.

Jesse [00:42:35] So even when we’re thinking about the world of bio colors—I think this came up a lot at Pangaia, which is primarily a fashion brand. So a lot of textile products.

Jesse [00:42:50] Textile dyes have the craziest demand on them because users expect that you wash it every time you wash it over so many years, and the colors should never change.

Jesse [00:43:05] Which—I get, and I have the same expectation for my own clothes—but at the same time, on a molecular level, that is such a crazy ask. It’s so hard. That the color doesn’t change when you sweat, or you spill some ketchup, or you leave it out in the sun too long.

Jesse [00:43:30] In England we did a lot of air drying in the sun—not so much here in the US—but that would really impact the color, and that is a really hard thing for people to adapt to.

Jesse [00:43:45] So that was another place where we saw a disconnect. And so as I was forming Petri, it was clear to me that while I hope we’re a future where that tension no longer exists, and that these new materials are valued in their own right and put in places where they can really shine and not just compared to what they’re not doing well—

Jesse [00:44:10] At the same time, I knew for Petri, in order to get to that future, we needed to meet the consumers and the manufacturers where they’re at.

Jesse [00:44:25] So how can we best create the most drop-in applicable colorants that also are super high-performing and not toxic to our bodies or our ecosystems, and actually have the opportunity to scale to be the price points that these industries all really depend on?

Erum [00:44:45] Yeah. Wow.

Jesse [00:44:50] Big challenge.

Erum [00:44:55] Thank you so much for laying that out. Oh my gosh—that’s amazing. It’s a tall order. But you’re going after it, so thank you so much.

Karl [00:45:10] We talked a lot about this at the beginning of the podcast—that biological materials and biology impart these different performance characteristics that people will have to get used to, or they’ll have to be educated on. In many cases the performance characteristics are gonna be better, but in other cases they’re just gonna be different.

Karl [00:45:35] I’m just thinking about laundry—it’s like, yes, I’m wearing my black shirt. It’s the worst color. It’s high heat, and you need a lot of water. You need to heat that water up to make the black. And then every time it washes, it fades a little bit, but the expectation is not.

Karl [00:45:55] But I think if we move to this world where it’s a biological black, maybe it is gonna fade over time and maybe the consumer just has to get used to that—but we’re not there yet.

Karl [00:46:10] So I think that’s a huge opportunity. And I know we’ve said it before: the brands that are able to educate on these kinds of things are the ones that are really gonna lead the way.

Karl [00:46:25] So, we talked about you’re working with fungi, and these are living systems. They don’t always behave predictably. How do you balance designing performance with consistency, which is something consumers expect, while also collaborating with these organisms that are alive?

Jesse [00:46:45] I’m not at that stage of my life yet, but I imagine it’s a lot like raising kids in the sense that you can create and control the systems in which you impart values and education, and how you structure the inputs of growth, if you will—but you also ultimately have no control over how they grow up and what kind of person they turn into.

Jesse [00:47:10] Like you can only control those things within your realm of control. And one day I’ll let you know how that is. But, as parents—is that correct?

Erum [00:47:25] Well said. Oh my goodness. Very good. You’re on your way. You have the playbook.

Karl [00:47:35] You don’t know how things are gonna turn out.

Erum [00:47:38] I still don’t know. I get surprised every day.

Karl [00:47:42] Same here.

Jesse [00:47:45] Right? So for my current children—my strains—I can control the nutrients and the pH and the temperature to try to create that perfect world for them to then produce the highest yield of color that they’re able to.

Jesse [00:48:05] But ultimately we need to be agile and responsive to the changes that are happening with each batch or each strain. And that is the witchcraft of fermentation.

Jesse [00:48:20] As many people who are far more experienced with fermentation will tell you, a lot of it is so out of our control that you just need to be responsive and patient.

Jesse [00:48:35] And that is difficult, but it also goes back down to educating both the customer and the end user. ’Cause as a B2B company, our customer is the manufacturer.

Jesse [00:48:50] Having that relationship of trust and education and honesty can go a long way, as well as telling the end consumer: here’s what it might look like and how it might show up, and how it might change from what we expect of other products.

Jesse [00:49:10] But really, you control what you can—not hope for the best, but design for the best.

Erum [00:49:20] Yeah. Awesome.

Erum [00:49:25] So you’re developing these pigments primarily right now for the beauty industry, and you’re looking for them to be drop-in ready. Tell us a little bit more about that. What are the biggest challenges in translating something bio-fabricated into systems built for petrochemicals?

Jesse [00:49:45] Oh man. A number of them.

Karl [00:49:50] I can only imagine. Wow.

Jesse [00:49:55] So maybe a challenge at each step of the way. But one of them is at the end, like we’ve already discussed. A big part of it has to do with the trust and relationship between the ingredient producer and the manufacturer, because the manufacturer has optimized their ways of doing things over many, many years.

Jesse [00:50:20] And that also really comes down to the hardware that they have, and that hardware has been developed for synthetic pigments.

Jesse [00:50:30] So if you’re thinking about a printer, the print head is a specific opening size and has a bunch of different lubricated tubes and systems that are all designed not for a biological pigment.

Jesse [00:50:45] And it can be really hard to find a prototyping partner who’s willing to take the risk that this new compound will clog their machine, ’cause that’s a really expensive problem for them. And I totally get that because once upon a time there didn’t used to exist print heads like that—those were developed over many, many years.

Jesse [00:51:10] So petrochemicals have this advantage not only with the economies of scale at really cheap price points—particularly for commodity chemicals—but also that all of this hard tech machinery was developed for those compounds.

Jesse [00:51:30] And so how do we now create new systems that not only are designed for these biological inputs, but until then we need to work with the machinery that they have and figure out how we can take these bio-based compounds and make them work in the ways that won’t clog up the print head? That’s a really interesting partnership that comes through those early customers.

Karl [00:52:00] Okay. So Jesse, your work goes from beauty, textiles, paint—you mentioned paint—which is super interesting—and even maybe foods in the future. Where do you see the biggest opportunity for fungal pigments to truly disrupt an industry?

Jesse [00:52:20] I know it sounds a little naive or dreamy, but I genuinely believe that we have the potential to have a future where all of the color is really coming from biological sources.

Jesse [00:52:35] And I do believe that we need a number of different technologies in order to reach that end reality. So I think it’s important that we have innovators not only working with those different technologies, but also focusing on different markets.

Jesse [00:52:55] I do see the value of the food space as an incredibly important one, where it is constantly in contact with our bodies—particularly in the US, where highly processed foods are so massive.

Jesse [00:53:10] I can’t even tell you the shock to my system when we moved back and saw the drink sections and the snack sections. I forgot how insane the supermarkets are. But it’s a really important space.

Jesse [00:53:30] And at the same time, I see a lot of brilliant innovators working and focusing on that market, and I love that for them.

Jesse [00:53:40] I think that it’s important to also then look at other markets. So the beauty market has been particularly of interest to me because I see it as this space that is focused on ingredients as innovation.

Jesse [00:53:55] The world of beauty right now is differentiating—’cause it’s so hard to differentiate as a beauty brand—but a lot of that differentiation comes through ingredient storytelling.

Jesse [00:54:10] And so if you walk the carousels of Sephora anytime soon, it’s all ingredient storytelling nowadays.

Jesse [00:54:20] And that’s really great for Petri because this is not only a material that would make the product stand out in its performance, but also deeply in its story.

Jesse [00:54:35] Beauty is a place where you have low volumes of high-margin ingredients, where a small percent inclusion in a product can have a huge impact.

Jesse [00:54:50] And the difficulty is also with food, is that these are regulated spaces. So the FDA regulates color as its own category—it’s its own team, it’s its own place—and that takes a number of years to do so.

Jesse [00:55:10] It’s not only the biggest opportunity, but it’s a difficult one that’s worthwhile. And that’s why we see a lot of people focused on these spaces because it is the interface between the material and our bodies.

Jesse [00:55:30] So whether that’s food or beauty, I think those are such important spaces.

Jesse [00:55:40] And the performance characteristics of these products, I believe, lend themselves a lot more easily to a bio color than something like textiles, where the demand on the colorant can be insane.

Jesse [00:55:55] Especially with textiles, it’s very massive volumes, very low margins, and the performance characteristics are off the charts.

Jesse [00:56:10] But in beauty, we see light stability—the color fading in response to light—is something that a lot of natural colors really struggle with. And for a number of years, plant dyes have been the dominant source of natural color—that’s the characteristic that people almost expect: that it’s gonna fade.

Jesse [00:56:30] And as I was looking in the world of fungi—what doesn’t fade—it’s important to see that. That’s a feature that works really well for food and beverage because the lifecycle of that window of fading can be much more akin to those product lifecycles.

Jesse [00:56:50] In the time that I extracted this two years ago, I keep it in the open window—it’s still pretty red, and that’s a great shout. But it still means that for a textile which could last a hundred years in use—especially if it’s furniture or when we think about all of the textiles that aren’t just fashion fabrics—the lifecycle demands are much higher.

Jesse [00:57:15] So I think that eventually we’ll get to all these categories, but in the immediate space, I think beauty is a really powerful way to have a real-world impact in people’s lives.

Erum [00:57:35] Amazing. That red was so beautiful that you just shared.

Jesse [00:57:38] She is.

Erum [00:57:40] Yeah. That’s from fungi.

Karl [00:57:42] Gorgeous.

Erum [00:57:45] Use that. Yes.

Jesse [00:57:50] Yeah.

Erum [00:57:55] I could see that. Whoa, whoa—here we go. Plum product. Okay, you guys have to look on video.

Karl [00:58:05] Wow. Beautiful.

Erum [00:58:10] Wow. Amazing. We love demos.

Jesse [00:58:15] We love a demo.

Erum [00:58:20] All right, I’ve enjoyed our conversation so far. It’s been so good. You took us all over—deep into the molecular side of things and orbitals and chirality. I love that part of the conversation.

Erum [00:58:40] And just the reality of the markets today and how colors interact with different products.

Erum [00:58:50] So let’s say in a perfect world—and you’re saying in your belief, and I also believe this too—that bio dyes can succeed at scale. And if they do, how might that change our relationship to color and materials that we surround ourselves with? Will we feel different in everyday life with bio dyes?

Jesse [00:59:15] Yes and no. I think it’s really interesting to go back to the thought that a lot of these colors, from the perspective of nature, have function and are produced for a function—and a lot of those functions actually have bioactivity that could benefit our own human uses.

Jesse [00:59:35] So as an organism produces a compound that is purpose-built to protect against UV rays, how might that be used in a cosmetic product to protect our skin from those same UV rays?

Jesse [00:59:50] And maybe that color is a beautiful black-brown, and that becomes something that is not just aesthetic, but function. That hybrid performance, I think, is something that a lot of industries are moving towards.

Jesse [01:00:10] As consumers are asking for ingredient lists—particularly in food and beauty—to be smaller, the onus is on each of those ingredients to do so much more than one task alone.

Jesse [01:00:25] So I think there’ll be a lot more value to colorants not just having aesthetic qualities, but also performance benefits.

Jesse [01:00:35] So with our red, in the literature, it’s reported to be an antioxidant. And something we’re testing now is what is the efficacy of that antioxidant in order to substantiate some sort of benefits to our bodies.

Jesse [01:00:55] But in a world where we will see that effect, how much cooler is it that we’re able to have more than just beauty?

Jesse [01:01:05] And I think it really takes us from this place where we think of our products and our materials as things that are inert to things that we actually have connection with and interact with.

Jesse [01:01:20] And that not only we do, but the whole planet does—that these are a part of these natural cycles, and that we’re also in this constant dialogue with our ingredients and our materials and all of it.

Jesse [01:01:40] And that subtle variation might come across not in the way that we expect of an overhaul of how we view everything around us, but in how much we understand and appreciate what we choose to bring into our lives in terms of products.

Erum [01:02:05] Oh my gosh, this is so good. Colors are so interesting. And the idea of having higher performance and functionality—like your red that can have antioxidant properties—and right now you’re looking at beauty, but if it’s safe to consume and you could put that in food, it’s like, oh my gosh.

Erum [01:02:25] Now Skittles go from being something that is considered perhaps toxic to something that is nutritious. It’s a crazy thought, but it’s a beautiful one. It’s all our foods—rather than being junk and harmful—can be helpful, healthy, and longevity, baby.

Karl [01:02:45] Yeah, exactly.

Erum [01:02:48] Longevity, baby.

Karl [01:02:55] All right, well we’re super excited, Jesse, to continue this conversation by moving into the quick-fire part of the conversation. I think you know how this works. Erum and I are gonna give you a short question, and you will answer it quickly.

Karl [01:03:15] Let me kick it off by asking: what is a color you think we’ve completely misunderstood?

Jesse [01:03:25] You touched on it earlier already, but black. Black is a color. I think we’ve totally misunderstood it. We take it for granted as something that is the most popular color across all industries that have colorants, and it’s not one color—it’s all colors. It’s so many other colors.

Jesse [01:03:45] It’s so many mixtures, and not all blacks are the same. It’s nuts.

Erum [01:03:55] Wow. Yeah. Deep dive into that.

Erum [01:04:00] Most surprising place you’ve seen pigments used—or want to see them used.

Jesse [01:04:10] So I actually misread the question entirely. I thought you had asked: where’s the most surprising place you’ve seen any pigments used?

Karl [01:04:20] Well, let us know—what’s the most surprising place you’ve seen a pigment used?

Jesse [01:04:30] I would say drugs and medication, and also salmon and meats—that we color raw fish and raw meat with pigments and dyes to make them look more appetizing.

Jesse [01:04:50] And in the same way, synthetic colors are added to medications sometimes so that you know medication X from medication Y, but mostly just so they’re more appealing. You know, at CVS, you see, “Ooh, look at this blue pill. How fun.”

Erum [01:05:10] Yeah. I was surprised by that—how much colors are used in drugs and the meats, too.

Erum [01:05:20] The salmon was so—salmon is white. A lot of salmon is white. Some are naturally, but then now they’re dyed. Because if I saw white salmon like a filet of it, how would you react?

Jesse [01:05:35] You’d think, “What’s wrong?”

Jesse [01:05:40] Or if it’s a little gray. So maybe, to the end of your question, I would hope that my pigments make it to those places eventually to replace the synthetics.

Karl [01:05:55] Jesse, what’s one material you think should be phased out immediately?

Jesse [01:06:05] It’s less of a material and more of a practice, but I would say capitalism at the sake of consumer safety should be phased out. I’m over it.

Jesse [01:06:20] And so where I think that particularly relates is synthetic dyes in kids and baby toys and clothing and bedding, because they’re putting their mouths on everything. I’ve been watching my niece grow up and she just is licking all of it, as all kids do.

Jesse [01:06:40] And they’re migrating—they’re going into their mouth, they’re getting on their skin. It can have actual repercussions. It just doesn’t need to be that way.

Erum [01:06:55] Mm-hmm. Wow. That’s powerful.

Erum [01:07:00] Last one: if you could grow one impossible color, what would it be?

Jesse [01:07:10] Opaque white. Opaque white is the holy grail, in my opinion, right now. Opacity is always something we need in material properties—to give a little bit of coverage. Like a lipstick isn’t just translucent; it has a little bit of coverage.

Jesse [01:07:30] We see this in paint a lot. Paint is the biggest industry of opaque white—titanium dioxide mostly. And if we’re able to grow that instead of mine it or synthetically produce it, that could be pretty game-changing.

Erum [01:07:50] Wow. Incredible. This has been such an amazing conversation. I feel so happy that we’ve had it finally on the record on the Grow Everything podcast.

Karl [01:08:05] Totally.

Erum [01:08:10] This was so good. You’re here in Brooklyn—we’re gonna hang out again soon. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and joining us.

Jesse [01:08:25] Thank you guys. Thank you. I so appreciate it. It’s been so much fun.

Erum [01:08:35] So Karl, what’d you think of that episode?

Karl [01:08:40] We kicked off the intro by talking about the wonder of spring and all these flowers and colors that are out there. And you pointed out that color is everywhere—which it is.

Karl [01:08:55] And I think Jesse really did a great job reminding us that color’s not just what we see. There’s also chemicals that are producing the color, and those chemicals interact with us and the environment.

Karl [01:09:10] And sometimes, as beautiful as the colors are—either on an animal or on a flower or plant—those colors are there either to attract or repel. So some of those colors are very safe and healthy; others might not be.

Karl [01:09:25] And I think it was great to hear Jesse give us her point of view on that. What’d you think, Erum?

Erum [01:09:35] Yeah, and it was also great to hear her trajectory and a lot of her philosophy. I really love the fact that she went down deep into the science. I haven’t talked about chirality in a long time, so she really took us down.

Erum [01:09:55] But she brought this creative design spin to it, just so people can understand science in different ways.

Erum [01:10:05] And for us being science communicators, it’s great to hear people working on projects like Jesse did at her time—whether it was in university or at Pangaia.

Erum [01:10:20] She’s looking at bio dyes as a material innovation, but she’s also looking at consumer expectations and trying to reconcile the two.

Erum [01:10:30] This is what we also talk about in general—not for biotech for sure, but being able to innovate using biology. And in the world of biotech, especially if you engineer biology, it comes with baggage. Once you think of genetically modified anything, there’s an innate “wait—genetically modified—ooh, scary,” but it’s not.

Erum [01:10:55] It’s what we need. It’s another innovation and a toolkit of different ways to make anything.

Erum [01:11:05] So you know—grow everything. But for colors in particular, I love the fact that Jesse brought a lot of different perspective—not just talking about technology, but going up and down the value chain from the lab to scaling up and what that looks like, and being able to talk about which markets to go after and what they’re looking for, and share some of the conversations she had with different potential buyers.

Erum [01:11:30] So she has such great experience, and it was great to have her on to be the kickstart of this conversation.

Karl [01:11:45] You also said beauty is a beachhead for colors. And what that reminds me is that beauty is such a dynamic space—new ingredients are coming in and out of fashion.

Karl [01:12:00] We talked about peptides and the GLP-1s at the beginning of this. We’ve mentioned in the past that you can’t go into Sephora and not see products that say peptides on them, and people don’t even know what that means.

Karl [01:12:15] Given that that market is so dynamic, it makes perfect sense for Jesse to be going after that with her colors because the people in that space are always looking for new ingredients.

Karl [01:12:30] We’re gonna be going to Suppliers Day here in New York City in a couple weeks. That is the New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists’ big trade show, and everybody is there. Every kind of innovation that is being put into cosmetic products is there, and it’s fascinating to go and walk the hallways and meet the different people.

Karl [01:12:55] I’m very excited about that. What’s your take on that part of the story, Erum?

Erum [01:13:05] Yeah. I think we’re at the beginning of this color revolution. Jesse mentioned opaque white, which is so interesting, because we’ve had all these other side conversations with people that have looked at dyes—whether they’re investors, talking to other innovators, or people that work at these large companies.

Erum [01:13:25] They’re saying opaque white is something of a holy grail to be able to make—and Jesse confirmed that in the quick-fire questions.

Erum [01:13:35] To antioxidant reds—I would love a multifunctional color. We talked about color being functional, but to be able to have it provide some health benefits would be incredible to aim for when we’re developing these different molecules.

Erum [01:13:55] So again, great conversation with Jesse. It was bold, it was grounded, and deeply needed because we are at the start of this revolution of color, and we’re gonna continue talking about it.

Erum [01:14:10] Now we’re gonna be hitting the road. We’ll have just completed our live podcast at DC Climate Week. We would have had a panel of investors that were talking to us about the road to remake almost everything.

Erum [01:14:30] So we’ll have that episode up in a couple weeks.

Erum [01:14:35] And then we’re going to be at SynBioBeta from May 4th to 8th. And I’ll be there actually moderating a panel on color. And on that panel we’ll have MycoChroma, Prism Bio, and Mars, talking about snacks and colors being in all their foods.

Erum [01:14:55] So if you’re going to be at SynBioBeta, please join us. If you’re thinking of going, go—we have a discount code when you apply to attend. It’s Grow Everything, so use that at the checkout.

Erum [01:15:15] And then in June we have NYC Tech Week. We’ll be doing a live episode talking to Robling, which was formerly Pseudonym, about their new AI-powered engineer—talking about AI-powered engineering from scratch.

Erum [01:15:30] They have this new tool. It’s very incredible, and we’ll be pressure testing it live. This is a live demo—something new that we haven’t done before—but we are going to ask this AI to create a whole biomanufacturing platform to make something and spit out the economics and help us get started.

Erum [01:15:55] So that’ll be a very fun episode. Stay tuned for that in June. And if you’re in New York, come—we’ll share the link to attend.

Erum [01:16:10] And I think that’s a lot of stuff we’re doing. Karl, is that it?

Karl [01:16:15] So if you haven’t bought your ticket to SynBioBeta, we do have a promo code. Use Grow Everything when you’re checking out and you will get a discount.

Karl [01:16:25] So thank you for tuning into the Grow Everything podcast. We love talking about what biology enables and how it’s transforming the world.

Karl [01:16:35] If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to us. Our contact information is in the show notes. And don’t forget to subscribe to our Substack, get us on YouTube—like and subscribe—and leave comments. Let’s grow.

Erum [01:16:55] Let’s grow.