192. Reading Between the Dyes: Roya Aghighi Unlocks Biological Pigments at Lite-1

Roya why is one of the most expressive, emotional part of our lives being produced through one of the most toxic, destructive, industrial processes on Earth?

Karl Hey, Ram, what's going on?

Erum Oh, Carl. Wow. It's been amazing summer. What a World Cup. That was insane until, like, the last game was a little bit like a snooze fest, but then the end, very interesting. What, was it like for you? What were you doing for the World Cup final?

Karl So I was, in the Adirondacks and

Karl Chris and I were together watching it, and, I was just very excited. I thought it was a very exciting game. Spain won in overtime. It was a well-deserved win. congratulations to Spain and the Spaniards, and what an amazing young team.

Karl that really, brought it together and showed the importance of teamwork. I thought it was just an amazing game. What did you think? Where were you when you watched it?

Erum I was here in Brooklyn. went to a watch [00:01:00] party with, friends of mine who also have little kids, mostly all little boys.

Erum So it was, like, five little boys running around that are all rabid soccer fans, and my son has become a soccer fan, and I have become one too. I actually played soccer throughout high school, which is cool. I mean, like, this is the "Grow Everything" podcast, folks, and we talk about biology as technology, and people are like, "Oh, you have science and sports," like they're just separate.

Erum no, We can do both. the jocks and the nerds coming together in no better way than the World Cup.

Karl I was watching an analysis that said that even on the worst viewing days, more Americans were watching World Cup than even, like, the most popular NFL games.

Karl So Americans have been converted into soccer/football fans and, people love it. And I think that, like, probably that World Cup, I bet probably more than a billion people watched it.

Erum revenue-wise is actually very interesting. I was talking to friends of mine and we were just thinking about, like, how this World Cup, of course, was very [00:02:00] Americanized because it was here on, on American soil and,the halftime show, like the first time something like that really happened at the World Cup, like to that degree, which was, kinda like, eh, because we're so used to the Super Bowl.

Erum FIFA's really trying to learn and get into the American market because they can 10X. if they capture the American interest into soccer, and I think this World Cup did an okay job.

Erum I feel like the game for third place, if that was the final game, it would've been captured, because that game for third place between France and England was wow That was an, an amazing game. There was a lot of shots happening.And then in the, the halftime show kind of left you wanting more,

Karl it definitely was a little bit of a ho-hum, halftime show.

Karl But it was the first time they did it, and what's gonna be interesting about the next World Cup in 2030 is I think, the first game is gonna be played in Paraguay to celebrate the 100th year of FIFA, and I think the first FIFA game was played in Paraguay.

Karl And then it moves [00:03:00] to Morocco, Spain, and Portugal. Those are the host countries. So I think it's gonna be really interesting.

Erum Yeah. And then how do we bring biology into sports?

Karl yeah. I mean, it's like the, these are athlete athletes, and so they have to train.

Karl And training is all about biology. So AI and biology, that's what training is all about,

Erum lately I've been thinking a lot about biology in terms of going out into the world and seeing what type of microbes exist.

Erum We've talked about it here on the podcast a lot about, there's trillions, some say up to 30 trillion different types of microbes, different species of microbes on this planet, and we've only studied, 200,000 of them to the level of, like, genomic analysis to really understand what they are, what they do, and to be able to, utilize and learn from these microbes.

Erum So there's a lot out there, and I've been thinking about it a lot, that it actually got into my dreams.

Karl Oh my God, what was the dream, Iram?

Erum So I had this crazy dream, and it's so vivid. it was a dream that I went on a [00:04:00] sampling expedition in Namibia.

Karl Of all places.

Erum Of all places. And so if you haven't been or haven't seen pictures of Namibia, the Namibian desert is, like, that rust orange color it's very vibrant.

Erum And I was driving in, like, a Jeep down the road, and, something happened where I had to swerve off the road, but off the road was a ravine, but it was very narrow. And, like, I didn't fall into it. I was just driving vertically down ... into this ravine, and then it, like, opened up to, like, this beautiful, like, oasis of crazy species of animals like an untouched, vibrant ecosystem that had waterfalls and all sorts of plants and animals that you couldn't believe, and then I woke up.

Karl But Namibia is such an interesting place because I think it's one of the least populated countries in the world.

Karl It's so big and it's got so many different biomes, right?

Erum in my dreams, there's lots of biomes going on, But there [00:05:00] are lots of biomes all over the world that have very interesting things going on, and a real-life sampling trip is occurring as we speak.

Erum I had recently, um, texted with Chris Mason. he's a, a doctor, a professor at Weill Cornell. He studies, genes. He's a geneticist, of, humans, specifically astronauts, and also looking at different ways of getting therapies and what different microbes do.

Erum He looks at a lot of, space exploration and what does deep space exploration look like and what types of things do you need in order to have, intergenerational space travel. He wrote a book called The Next 500 Years, which we'll link in the show notes. And so he just arrived in the Pacific.

Erum He's going to the Bikini Atoll, which is a part of the Marshall Islands, and he's on this expedition to look for microbes or other types of biological activity that can withstand radioactivity So radioactivity, radiation, it's a big issue [00:06:00] in space. but how can we learn from how biology has been either collaborating or fending off or protecting itself from, radioactivity but through biology.

Erum And so this whole sampling expedition is through his organization called BioAstra, and we'll have a link to that in the show notes. It goes through, how they're approaching the sampling expedition, how they're working with the local agencies and organizations, and they're honoring the people there.

Erum They're not just going without permission. They're doing it everything by the book, and it's really cool. I mean, I'm so interested in these sampling expeditions because of discovery. You know, it's so exciting to see what people can learn and glean from it. Chris Mason, if you're listening, we're very excited for this work that you're doing.

Erum Be safe, enjoy. We cannot wait to have you back on and share what you've learned from this trip.

Karl Yeah, I can't wait to hear what Chris learns. and I think our listeners should know, if you don't, that Bikini Atoll is where there were a number of nuclear [00:07:00] tests that happened, I think probably in the '50s and '60s.

Karl We don't do those kinds of nuclear tests anymore, but, for that reason, that place is where there should be a lot of microbes that adapted to radiation. And there are naturally occurring species that are known for being able to withstand high levels of radiation.

Karl So Chris, we wanna get you back here.

Erum Yeah. I was like,what are these microbes called? Are they called radiofiles?We'll have to ask Chris when he comes on.

Karl so we're talking about microbes. Microbes are in the news. I'm sure you've heard about this cyclospora outbreak, that's affecting lettuce across the country.

Karl and I think it's super interesting because it reminds us of Anika, which we had Vishal, Bhuyan on the podcast pretty early on, and Vishal had de- developed a way of tracking, infections like this in crops by spraying spores on the crops.

Karl And so we actually reached out to Vishal because we wanted to have him come on and talk about this outbreak, and unfortunately he can't come on. He's, like, super busy. I had a sense he was [00:08:00] gonna be heads down. But, yeah, what a failure, and unfortunately,

Karl this is going on, and then apparently the company that is responsible for this made a donation to the administration, and they've really downplayed the fact that all this lettuce is,infected with cyclospora, causing this outbreak and making a lot of people sick.

Erum And wasn't that, the company, that was like a, a false positive?

Karl Yeah. That's what they're saying. It was a false positive, and yet people continue to get sick.

Erum Yeah. and I mean, I don't know if it's from their food, It could be from something else.

Erum But the whole thing too, this is something that came to my purview when I was listening to the, Pivot podcast, and Scott Galloway pointed this out, was that the federal government scaled back mandatory pathogen surveillance and diagnostic testing due to workforce reductions and budget cuts at health agencies.

Erum So cyclospora was a pathogen that was tested for, but because the testing the funding had been [00:09:00] reduced and there's no one testing for it anymore, guess what? It's slipping through the crack. So now there's six pathogens that are optional testing. So cyclospora's one of them. Campylobacter, Listeria, Shigella, Vibrio, and then Yersinia.

Erum They were moved to optional monitoring because they just scaled back the health departments. and I don't want this to be political, but it's just more, like, infrastructure and why it's important, and the scaling back of anything that has to do with health is atrocious.

Erum And it's so upsetting that Our infrastructure that had been stood up to support human health has been dismantled.

Erum And it's like, fine, if you want a different type of infrastructure, put that in place first before dismantling what we have, right? If you want this to be all privatized, fine, but, like, make sure it's privatized and completed before you dismantle what exists, because people are dying.

Karl Yeah. I mean, I want...

Karl And it's interesting [00:10:00] that you say that because it made me think, is the intent that all these things become private? like testing. So then companies have to pay a testing,instead of paying the government and the government doing, people pay some private entity that's gonna test them, but then that private entity can be bought, just like we're seeing people pay the government off.

Erum privatize it first before you remove the infrastructure that already exists. can we just make sure everyone's safe and healthy?

Erum we already went through this. These were there for a reason, not just because we love spending money. If there's one thing we spend money on, it should be health and protecting our society from bad biology.

Erum these biological solutions

Erum in our world, we work with a lot of biotech companies, and they have to raise money, and they take on all the risk. and they did, actually rely on the NIH and these health agencies from the government to receive funding for a research activity that has been pretty much, obliterated.

Erum I think there's some things that are coming back online, but not at the rate and the amount that is [00:11:00] required So we'll see. But to switch gears and transition, to talk about computationally designed organisms.

Erum So Carl, you and I went to the workshop on computationally designed organisms that was virtually held this year. And I went last year, but this was your first time attending. tell me some thoughts and takeaways that you got from this, half-day workshop.

Karl So I think it's worth mentioning that, this is run by Mike Levin of Tufts University and Josh Bongard of the University of Vermont, in Burlington, UVM. And,it is just amazing to hear what these guys are doing with biology. So I had been privy to this after you went last year, and then also we were lucky to interview Mike,

Karl and it just really is a mind-blowing approach towards biology. It's about having cells do things without really focusing on the genome and the instructions that are in the cell, because there are instructions that are [00:12:00] inherent to cells that don't necessarily depend on the DNA and what's happening in the genome.

Karl So just that already is a mind-blowing concept, and then being able to do this computationally and start to think about what could you do with these living organisms that you couldn't do if you're working at the gene or genome level I feel like I'm still wrapping my head around it because I think that there's so much there.

Karl And it's one of those areas where I think that the science is there and we need a lot more creativity. So I want to see artists come into the world of computationally designed organisms so that they can play with these concepts and really show us what's possible. I think the possibilities are endless, but I really want to see where this goes.

Karl So I felt very humbled to be a part of this meeting, and I felt like I learned a lot and I walked away just so inspired how about you, Erum? It's your second time.

Erum Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's becoming more and more clear.

Erum It is very dense. we do have leading [00:13:00] professors talking and thinking about this all the time, and they come at it from so many different angles. I mean, there's science, there's math, there's philosophy, there's physics. There's a lot of deep science that's going on to figure out how. I mean, that's the whole thing with,science and religion.

Erum Science is, like, how things happen. Religion's like why or faith or spirituality.

Erum And, like, these are scientists, you guys. I mean, we were talking about, what is influencing biology? Because,... The ecosystem now, we're all looking at manipulating genes.

Erum Very like, "Oh, we know the code. We're going to write the code just like we write pr- software programs." It's not that simple. What computational design organisms are are saying is that biology knows.rather than going from the molecular level and just seeing what expression happens and observing, let's go from the phenotype and see what's living there.

Erum And then, if we need to know the genome and what's actually happening, fine. But there's influence that happens through the environment, and there's this, like, push and pull of what, [00:14:00] biology is responding to what is in its environment, and it's interesting to see this whole idea of biology is agential.

Erum It is making its own decisions. Yes, some of it is coded through our genes, but a lot of it's also, nature versus nurture. It's coming from our environment. So it's fascinating, , but we always bring it back up to, like, how is this going to affect our lives and our society?

Erum And there are a couple things.Michael Levin and Josh Bongard also work with, two companies. One's called Fauna Systems, and they look at how to use computational designed organisms, whether they're xenobots. they have their own naming. The taxonomy and nomenclature is still being written,

Erum But to have these, agential materials be able to, clean up waterways and clean up the environment, create new materials for construction, that's what Fauna Systems is doing. And then there's another company called Astonishing Labs that are creating what they're calling anthrobots.

Erum [00:15:00] So-microbes, organisms that are created through computational design that can fix tissue. And they showed an example of, they had like I think they werebrain tumor cells,

Erum there was like a rupture in it, andThey just, put this Anthrobot in the same Petri dish of these brain cells, and the Anthrobot just organically or from this platonic latent space figured out how to fix it And you're like, "What?

Erum What is this?" So anyway, it's, very interesting. There's gonna be a lot more conversations about this because this is a new type of biotechnology that is really honoring biology rather than just kind of brute force changing it through gene editing, which is still great in many regards, but there's just, now we have a larger toolkit to, shape biology in different ways.

Karl Yeah. It just shows that we still have so much to learn and the applications are gonna be endless.

Karl all right, so with [00:16:00] that, why don't we, move into this week's episode?

Karl we're returning to the BioDye series. We started this BioDye series several episodes ago, We did four interviews with people who are working on changing the world of dyes, and so we're gonna continue that series. And today we're interviewing

Karl Roya Aghighi, the founder of Light1, a company that's developing biologically produced dyes for textiles through fermentation. We're super excited because Roya has become a friend of ours. We met her first at a Ginkgo Ferment and then ran into her again at BioFabricate last year, and her background is fashion design, material science, and supply chain evaluation.

Karl And she came to biotech through a desire to replace toxic conventional dyes and the processes that are used today with high performance, traceable, and more regenerative alternatives. With that, let's let Roya take it away.

[00:17:00] Roya Agigi of Light One Bio, we are so excited to have you on the Grow Everything podcast. We've been trying to get you on for a really long time

Roya Thanks for having me. It's honestly very, very exciting to be here and talking to you both.

Karl All right, so we're gonna kick it off by doing some background on you.

Karl you were a designer, and then you came into biotech, which is a fascinating journey, and we actually met each other at a Ginkgo Bioworks, Ferment event probably, like, two or three years ago when they were still holding those events. But what was the catalyst that took you from thinking about aesthetics and materials to engineering color using microorganisms? Yeah, I'm not sure about the catalyst, honestly. My journey had a lot of turns to get me here, and it all came down to one question

Roya that I couldn't really, like, let go of. It was really about why is one of the most expressive, emotional part of our lives is being produced through one of the most toxic, [00:18:00] destructive, industrial processes on Earth?

Roya So it's a long journey to get there. I'm gonna, like, walk you through it. basically the reason that, that question hit me hard and I really wanted to get to the bottom of it, not just immediately find a Band-Aid solution to it, is that I really truly love this industry. I practically grew up in it. My mom was a fashion designer, so ever since a very, very young age, I was always surrounded and exposed to these, like, beautiful fabrics, colors, textures, materials all over, her studio and our house a- as a matter.

Roya And, I remember her telling me stories about why she would choose these colors or materials or textures as a combination and match them together to better represent the personality of this individual that she was designing that piece for. So you can already tell that I was exposed to the meaning and emotional part of the colors way before aesthetic part.

Roya And as a result of that- that upbringing, I always wanted to operate in this space. There [00:19:00] was like a deep, fire and passion in there. But, observing h-how much power designers have in changing and shifting, or introducing a meaningful overhaul into how we interact with our surrounding, environment,

Roya what type of meanings we associate to material world was also very, attractive to me. I wanted to use that as a superpower to introduce a meaningful change in the consumer behavior and how we interact with our world. And through that, I started to dive really deep into the material science.

Roya Because materials, let's face it, are the backbone of every interaction that we have with our world, regardless of we understand it, consciously or subconsciously. So through that journey, I ended up, sitting on the other side of a table.

Roya I got a corporate job, as one may do. I was working in the fashion industry on the other side of a table, assessing and stress testing all these n-innovative materials that we wanted to adapt to our supply chain [00:20:00] of now. I was basically figuring out if they would perform, if they meet our criteria, would they fit into our existing processes and supply chain or not.

Roya And through that, that was like a really rare advantage and really good position to be in because I got to see, all the gaps, all the upsides, and all the disadvantages, why cer-certain innovations would go successfully and why certain ones would get adapted only at like a niche capsule collection, and you name it And this was around the same time that I think a lot of, facts and findings around negative footprint of textile industry was just constantly getting revealed.

Roya It was everywhere in the news, It was the AI of the time. You could not turn your face around and not see a news or fact about it. And I remember World Bank estimated that there still is around 20% of global industrial water pollution was coming from textile dyeing alone.

Roya And further going into this rabbit hole of finding more and more,facts around it, [00:21:00] realized that scientists had found around 70 chemicals that, are very toxic. We cannot really, like, take them out of our environment, with the existing treatment solutions that we have, And it was all, like, really big numbers, very horrifying, like, facts that, even just on the paper, they sounded so, bizarre.

Roya And now imagine if you could see those right in front of your eyes. And what do I mean by that? To the same position that I was talking about, I got to travel to our factories where the actual textile dyeing happens, and I saw it. I saw something that I really couldn't unsee anymore. there are these stinky black rivers.

Roya And not only that, then you see kids playing in it. You see mothers right beside it cooking. And I was told around that city in, north side of India that, sadly, the average age of citizens are around, like, 50 [00:22:00] years old. So let that sink for a second. And that was, like, moment that I really could not, even think that I can be a part of this cause or problem for another second Going back to my fascination for, nature, what I like to call it, like, original intelligence, and having that design perspective, I always saw nature as like Lego pieces, like these, like, building blocks of biology that nowadays, with the advancements of technology, we can enhance them to really, like, build a better way, like, address a lot of deep challenges that we are experiencing right now.

Roya And just because, I think nature has been doing it for billions of years. So there are ways to do it. We just need to really look deep and, learn from it. Yeah. I mean, that's incredible. Thanks for really painting that visual picture. I mean, we are talking about colors here, and it's, it's very vivid just to how you describe

Erum these polluted streams, and this polluted environment with these people.

Erum it's really, it's sad. I've seen [00:23:00] some of this in documentaries. and of course I've seen you talk on stage at BioFabricate, so I- I've learned all about it. But could you help our listeners visualize Light1's technology? You talk about nature. we are of course talking about biodyes.

Erum We haven't been in a minute. But if someone held a, like a swatch dyed by Light1,in, their hands, then what would they see? What would surprise them about it? tell us a little bit more.

Roya the best part about this question is that if you hold a swatch that is dyed by Light1, colors, immediately you may not necessarily notice any difference until you're told that, "Hey, this is biologically dyed," and that's where the whole shocking factor comes into the picture.

Roya I think, to give you a little bit of a snapshot into our technology, I'm sure as my peers have explained it, we do produce colors with fermentation. So, at Light1, we use microorganisms as our color factories. In nature, there are multiple different microorganisms that naturally produce these beautiful, vibrant pigments.

Roya So through biotechnology, we have developed a production [00:24:00] molecule or microbe that can now produce this, natural colorant or compound at a much higher speed, efficiency, yields, and make it perform how we want it conventionally, for that saying. And from there, That boosted organism, that super organism that we have created, now it goes into bioreactors, and we give it the ideal conditions such as the food, temperature, pH, and you name it, for it to be at its optimal growth conditions to produce, these beautiful, vibrant colors for us.

Roya From there, we filter it, we dehydrate it, and voila, we have these beautiful, vibrant colors in our hand, and now the actual work starts. our production team then takes it and start to formulate them to make sure that they can get adapted to everything around us. So right now, we started with black, and first of all, as you can tell, it's my favorite color.

Roya It's everywhere around me. And besides that, it's one of the most toxic and, [00:25:00] pollutive colors in the world. And not only that, it's one of the hardest colors to really, like, produce sustainably. And not only that, there hasn't necessarily been any pure black that works across all different materials and different parts of the industrial supply chains.

Roya And we have been able to do that. Beyond that, we, expand our color collection to five beautiful, vibrant colors, and that's just the beginning for us. So going back to your earlier questions, what is the shocking factor? If you don't know it, it's very normal. It looks as deep, as rich in the color, and saturated as a conventional black does.

Roya But once you know it, you get surprised for the same factor, how a biologically colored is as deep and as high performance as a synthetic dye. that's exactly like the shock factor that I get from our industrial partners because, as soon as they see the performance, they-- the first question is, "How?"

Roya historically, natural or organic colors that are, made from plants or minerals, they haven't been able to perform to the same level as [00:26:00] synthetics. And what do I mean by performance in the textile industry? It's usually about how many cycles of wash it can endure. how many hours could it be in front of sunlight or, any kind of light b-before fading?

Roya If I rub it into some other type of material, would it start, like, leaving a mark or fade away or have, like, the disqualities? So basically, we have been able to do multiple rounds of testing to prove that it works across all different type of fibers, and that itself is a really surprising factor for a lot of people

Karl That's amazing.

Karl Wow. I love that you guys are tackling black first because as you can also see, it is one of my favorite colors. But I do often talk about the environmental impact and how guilty I feel about wearing black because it's not just, the dyes itself, it's also the amount of water and hot water that you need to dye things, black.

Karl So you guys at Light1, you're using living systems to create something that traditionally had been manufactured through chemistry and [00:27:00] extraction. How have you navigated that tension between controlling outcomes as a designer and collaborating with the unpredictability of biology?

Roya Oh my God, yes. That's a big moment as a designer.

Roya But at the same time, I like to think that designers are trained naturally to be adaptive. Think of it this way, you've been working on a very big idea for a very long time, and suddenly overnight there is this like, next generation, like Gen Z trend coming up in like TikTok, or you get a very specific feedback from, your user that really changes the direction that you thought in your mind that you were going to continue.

Roya So that helps us to really be adaptive as much as possible to really, like, quickly offer, a solution or really get to that. But in our very specific world, I think, you have to shift your relationship to variations. In conventional manufacturing, variations are considered as a defect. In biological [00:28:00] systems, variation is information.

Roya It's real valuable data. It's something that's telling you about the process, the feedstock, the organism's state. And the goal is not really to eliminate it, it's to understand it well enough to be able to control it at the right level. And that's the art that we are talking about, like, biological systems, and nature has been doing it so beautifully.

Roya Where it gets technically demanding is, at the industrial scale. As we all know, industry and brands, they want repeatability, consistency of shade, and you name it, and all of which at, large volumes of scale. The work we do is essentially translating biological, variabilities into process parameters that we can hold constant.

Roya Fermentation conditions, substrate, timing, extraction, and that's where the science is. You're not fighting with biology, you're learning its language, it well enough to give it [00:29:00] clear instructions to get the results that you're aiming for. the best analogy that I have, if anybody is into cooking, is chefs.

Roya the great chefs in the world, they don't just, like, drop cooking because the, this batch of tomato is different from last week, right? So they understand the palate and they understand the ingredients deeply enough to then be able to, produce the same results every single time, knowing that, and maybe a different batch of tomato needs a slightly different type of treatments. And that's exactly what I think our team has been able to build that pipeline really well.

Erum Wow. Yeah, I love that. Variation is information. I love that, and the chef analogy is very strong. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Roya Of course. If you think about it, like, it's really all about- through collaboration with the microorganisms instead of, the traditional mindset of using microorganisms for a purpose, rather than really letting them show you what they want to do or best and how they can do it best, and, like, really [00:30:00] learning from them as true collaborators,

Erum not just a tool. Yeah. Yeah, well said. Wow. So we've been having this bio dye series, and there's about a, you know, dozen companies at least growing color through biology. So you, like as you mentioned, there's different microbes, different processes, different end markets. So we had people talk about food dye, and textile dye.

Erum There's different types of markets.when you look at the category, do you see a convergence or divergence? are all of these companies going to end up in roughly the same place, or are they actually very different bets?

Roya Honestly, I think it's a combination of both. and for me, I see this as a very healthy sign of the category. we are all similar, but we are very different. It's different organisms, different processes, different markets, different bets on, as you mentioned, like, different entry points. some work with bacteria, some work with fungi, some w- work with algae, some have engineered yeast to actually, like, be fermented to produce colors and whatnot.

Roya there aren't [00:31:00] just variations of the same approach. These are genuinely different techniques and different paths that we are all, basically exploring, different structures, different cost a- analysis, different, supply chain fits. So we are diverting from that aspect of, like, getting all into the industry.

Roya But, here's the thing. I truly believe that we all need to succeed, and I know that a lot of people may say that. I don't mean it in the diplomatic way or, like, I'm not trying to be ... diplomatic. Yeah, I really truly mean it, and I'm gonna tell you why. Just look at the synthetic dye industry.

Roya There are hundreds of different, like, synthetic dye producers that they're all offering it at scale, offering it to different, sectors, different markets at different cost, perspective, different performance, and you name it. So- The question is not, that if there is just one, of these biological colors going to own the whole category or not.

Roya I think that's fundamentally the wrong way of looking at it. The question should be if [00:32:00] us all as a whole can scale to then be considered as a default solution rather than the alternative. I think that's the way how we all need to think about it. And right now, every single company, as you mentioned, is, proving something.

Roya some of us are proving the performance. Some of us are proving the cost. Some of us proving that fermentation can really get to the scale to meet the demand of the industry. It can get into food, be food safe, and perform. It can get into, like, different materials with different performance, expectation and whatnot.

Roya And this is all beneficial for every single one of us. At this moment, I don't necessarily think we are competing against one another. I think we are still competing against the norms that biological colors can replace the synthetic ones, and there is a lot of power into that if you actually think about it.

Roya So my honest view is that I'm rooting for every single company to, succeed because once they pave the path, the next time that I'm gonna have a conversation [00:33:00] with a sourcing director, it's gonna make my life a lot easier.

Karl Amazing. So one of the things you mentioned, Roya, is, performance.

Karl And we talk a lot about performance being more important than sustainability, even though we know sustainability is super important. and designers and brands really wanna know that colors, their threads, everything that they use performs. So when a sourcing director or someone like that at a major brand puts your dyes through their standard battery of tests, whether it's color fastness, light fastness, wash and rub tests, where are you holding up and where are you still g- closing the gap?

Roya I think that's a very important question, and as an ex-industry person, I think that's really fair for, for industry to ask that. especially there was a time that there was a lot of boom of biomaterials that, in my opinion, the word sustainability and, it was abused to not in a good level.

Roya It wa- it was just a trend. It was like [00:34:00] a lot of greenwashing. And as, as a result of that, the focus into the function and performance of materials wasn't necessarily there for a lot of these innovations that were just up and coming at the time. So the advantage to our team is that we come from the industry.

Roya I, myself, as I was mentioning earlier, I was assessing all those performance criteria of innovations, to see if they would get adopted. So where I saw at the time there were a lot of gaps from the innovation offering is exactly where we basically built Lightone around. So ever since the beginning, we made sure that everything that we do and offer at Lightone has to perform to the industrial standards and drop into existing, industrial processing and industrial coloring systems.

Roya And in my opinion, that's the way to really, like, get adopted at an industrial scale. Otherwise, it's always going to be a lot of, like, friction and, like, risks that the industry is not necessarily, willing to take, nor frankly, I think we're way past that time to spend all [00:35:00] that time to try to make things work So we have done many testings in different performance criteria, like the ones that you mentioned, wash, rub, light, all of that, to really prove that it is performing to a really beautiful level.

Roya and we have tested it not only on fi- fabrics and fibers, on across so many different materials, and there are some, not to tease anybody, but there are some really cool applications that we are working on right now that you may get to hear about them, in a bit. And,

Roya I'm not just ta-talking about, like, the other biological colors, but wherever natural or organic colors were failing, we have been able to show and prove that ours is really working. An area that, we are still trying to explore, and that's the area that we haven't necessarily, like, touched so much, is, transformative colors.

Roya And by that, when from frozen food to, like, cooked food, when the color needs to change to different hues, that's an area that, we are not necessarily, like, focusing on right now, and that's the next chapter for Light1, I think.

Erum that's really cool, the whole color-changing.

Erum I would love to dig into that later. it sounds incredible. but [00:36:00] I, I wanna kind of just go, hone in a little bit more about this, the concept of sustainability. And you've mentioned before that it can't just be about doing less harm anymore. So how does Light1 move beyond sustainability toward regeneration?

Roya sustainability, as it's been practiced so far, it's been just a defensive mode. Do less harm, use less water, produce or emit less carbon, and then you're good. By that standard, those are necessary factors, for the record, I'm not denying them. But by that standard, you can still operate a system that's extracting resources from Earth and call it sustainable just because it's doing it slower.

Roya regenerate- regeneration is a different question for me. it's all about what can the system give back? For regenerative fashion, I think we need to think beyond the material retention biodiversity, rebuilding ecosystem health, integrating nature-based solutions into all different parts of the supply chain as a [00:37:00] whole, and that's the framework that we really, consider for sustainability.

Roya for biological colors especially, I think, regeneration shows in a few different ways. microbial production can be run on waste feedstock, so instead of, causing a problem, you can consume the problem Or basically, at Light One, we are thinking of, like, how can we put our own waste back into the system to make sure that it doesn't even get to a point that then we have to find a solution for it, or how our dyes can be recycled from fibers and be reused again.

Roya And within these frameworks, these are just the ones that I can actually, like, publicly mention, but we are also working on some really cool other ideas behind the scene that can fundamentally offer an overhaul, not just as, problem, solution, problem, solution mindset.

Karl That's just amazing, Roya. I love hearing that.

Karl I think we don't think about regeneration as much as we should. I think it's something we need to talk even more about here on the Grow Everything podcast. I think for many of our listeners, [00:38:00] this idea of growing color from microbes still sounds like science fiction. and scaling biotech is never easy.

Karl What's been the biggest challenge you guys have faced at Light One translating your work from the lab to industrial adoption?

Roya Yes. I listened to a couple of the episodes during this series, and there is a lot of really good conversations around like, the scale capacity in the world, so I'm not gonna touch base on that.

Roya That's like an obvious challenge that not just biological colors, but any fermentation-based process is going to face for the next two to three years until the capacity that is currently, getting built is finished and ready to be, deployed. But the biggest challenge or another aspect that, I think is very important to talk about is the cost expectation.

Roya There is this assumption that biological dyes should already, at pre-commercialization scale, be cost competitive with synthetic dyes that had over a century of optimizations behind them. The first synthetic dyes [00:39:00] in '50s were expensive, luxury, and unstable, and only available to a very, specific class of society.

Roya It took decades of chemistry refinements, infrastructure and build up, scaling for them to get to the cheap commodity that they are today, and we tend to forget about that. And it's the same with almost every other material that today we consider ordinary. Let's talk about plastics. They were luxury in '90s when they were first launched, and they were labeled as premium products.

Roya It took decades before plastics became, like, such a cheap... Like, honestly, the cheapest material now in the world. Or, I don't know if you saw in, like, Vogue magazine and there are images of people lining up for nylon stockings being released. That was how big of a deal it was at the time, and now it's considered disposable.

Roya So when I sit in the meetings and people ask me or question me why our bio colors are, at this time, [00:40:00] pre-commercialization scale, are not exactly at the same price of, synthetic dyes that have had, like, millions of tons of scale and hundred of years behind them, trust me, I do understand the question, but I also think that's a misunderstanding of where we are in the curve.

Roya It's not comparing apple to apple. It's comparing the beginning of one story with middle, or what I like to call it, the end of their story. so the, the honest answer is that we will get there, at least for Light1, I can speak. We have done a lot of techno-economic analysis to show that in only two years we can become cost competitive with all these, the commodities that we are experiencing right now.

Roya So it's... putting it in context of how long a conventional material or any material innovation needs to take to get there, two years is actually not that long. We're just asking for a little bit of runway that any material innovation needs to get there. [00:41:00]

Erum Yeah, and that's great 'cause like, you've had these conversations with all sorts of different companies.

Erum Some, big brands or mid brands and fashion designers and, I hear you on, they're like, "Oh, I'm not even gonna look at it until the costs come down." And it's like, well, that's not really a fair assessment. And it's like where are they willing to make the trade-off, to take the narrative, which is a great narrative, to build that into the cost that goes then onto the consumer.

Erum things that are, organic's more expensive. the consumer understands that it's gonna cost a little bit more for these and so, they're willing to pay, especially as they learn the narrative. But tell us like, what separates the, the companies that you talk to that are truly committed to change from those that are just like signaling or just throwing their hands up in the air and saying, "Oh, sorry, it's not like a penny a pound, so you know-"

Erum I'm sorry, I'm not gonna buy it."

Roya Oh my God, I think Carl and Ron, we had many conversations about this behind the scenes, right? Like, it's just- Yeah ... it's a topic that I come to you both [00:42:00] quite often. I think that the telling is- It comes into risk appetite and actioning on it at the same time.

Roya You can't just sit on the sidelines and watch for it to become perfect before wanting to do anything. the brand that's truly committed will absorb those risks or some of the risk, or to any extent that they're willing to. And those risks could be price, performance, the timelines, the data feedback loop that you get from these,brands, and those are the ones that they have decided truly as a whole that this matters to them, so now they're ready to be a part of the journey and put some effort in.

Roya you know it better, I'm not gonna basically get into the details of that, but I had a lot of interactions with many major brands that have the power to really make this shift become a lot easier, but, they're just signaling. And what do I mean by that is that they would only engage when the risk is at zero, which means that they want [00:43:00] somebody else to do all the work and prove it and also pay for it to scale, and then they would be ready to take any action around it.

Roya essentially they want sustainability without any of the effort that is needed at earliest stage, and to me, that's not really commitment. That's branding. That's marketing.

Erum That's just, ugh. I love this concept of shared risk. I think it's something that, we've mentioned before. hear other people talk about it, and especially actually from the investment world.

Erum there's Sabryia Dukes from Indie Bio had mentioned that sure, like, investors can put money in to a startup, but there needs to be more shared risk across the buyers, more people that are up and down the value chain that are responsible for bringing products to market, and they need to do so in a smart, safe way.

Erum How do they do that? So that's a big topic of discussion that I think, we'll have to continue to pull that thread. And then of, of course, our conversations offline, We'll have those too. For sure.

Karl Yeah, I was just gonna say it, that shared risk thing, [00:44:00] it doesn't get talked about enough, and I think more people need to understand it, because the innovators are taking the risk by developing the product, and the end buyer also is taking some risk too.

Karl But when you share it, it actually it benefits everybody. I mean, I'd love to get your take a little bit more on this, Roya.

Roya Absolutely. The, I've had, the best successful stories that we had, we talked about earlier around the formulations that we have developed and now they're proven on multiple different substrates.

Roya That comes from, obviously, we do have a lot of industrial expertise that we put into it, but it's always good to know what the final end user's process or their expectations are. And frankly, in the fashion industry alone, even if you're talking about, like, just one single fiber cotton, there are so many different type of expectations depending on the final application or their very specific users.

Roya So it's really good to have this data, feedback loop They're a part of the story as it's being built, so you don't end up with offering what you think is the [00:45:00] best solution, and then there's a huge gap trying to make it fit with the expectations, either from industrial, processes as well as expectations of the industry.

Roya So- the brands that, or the manufacturers that I'm working with right now, that they're willing to really, like, be a part of that, it has made our progress so much faster, so much more efficient. it's beneficial for both ways because not only we are then able to offer the solution that is tailored to their very specific needs, but it can get there a lot faster.

Roya So the timelines of them havingtheir hands into a real sustainable material or innovative material is gonna become a lot shorter, too. And, Iran, we talked about, like, investment side. That is something that I really feel like there needs to be a lot more talk around it. investment shouldn't just be about finances.

Roya it's not just an ATM. You really need to bring that network and the value for, the industrial adaptation to the founders. [00:46:00] Trust me, it's a very chaotic journey to start a company, especially in a very new sector, novel sector, from the beginning. So there needs to be a lot of, like, a good network and community of people with different levels of expertise that come together to really help support this grow and,get to somewhere.

Erum The best, investors that I have in that aspect, those are the ones that have been able to put me in touch with their network in the industry. They actually go and do a little bit of that work. I know that everybody's busy, so it's not, like, an expectation. But they're willing to, again, share the risk, not just sit around and be like, "Come to me when it's completely de-risked," and all of that, That reminds me,it's like the, the whole Silicon Valley culture. It's like, you could raise a lot of money and you're on your own, and you have to figure it all out. and I actually was watching Silicon Valley on HBO recently. I was rewatching it, probably my third timeAnd, like,like, anyone who's a founder in, like, starting a company, you have to watch it because it's just the, the stories are real.

Erum They're very visceral if you've been through the startup journey. Andthere's [00:47:00] this one episode where,there's a couple competitors, and th- they're trying to sell to these big companies. And this one competitor, spent months negotiating a contract to build on spec, to get those specs from the buyer.

Erum And the other competitor, in the show, was able to, like, find the specs and find the deal. And then they were able to be like, "All right, you know what? We know what the specs are, too. Let's have a bake-off." Yeah. And then, like, it was like- But the whole thing is, like, all the brands, any brand or buyers of colors, just tell us your specs.

Erum Just tell us your specs and we'll get it done.

Roya It's so interesting you say that about the spec part. Like, somehow very specific information becomes black box in a lot of, like, different industrial partners that we talk to, and they're not willing to share information, and yet they expect you to meet their expectations.

Roya So it's somewhat, pretty in an ambiguous, like, kind of position to be in. Like, you want me to get there, but you're not able to tell me [00:48:00] where that goalpost is. Sure, no problem. I'll figure it out myself. So, and yeah, that show is a must to watch.

Roya it's awesome. so Roya, you're working at this really interesting intersection, biology, material science, design, and I'm curious, like, what's the thing about Biocolor right now that you believe that no one else in the industry believes?

Roya If-- that answer is going to be different every day that you ask me. I have a lot of opinion in this very specific area. But I guess today the way how I'm gonna answer it is the fact that color is going to become the most important data layer of any garment, or a garment's life cycle.

Roya And why do I think that is because, now we're at a time that a lot of these bio-fiber or bio materials are finally reaching the level that they can be scaled, they can perform, they can really replace the conventional ones. So the next topic is going to be around all the chemicals, including the colorants, that are used in that [00:49:00] whole garment, as a whole.

Roya So traceability, from fiber to consumer is going to be the next big thing, and EU eco-design and the corporate sustainability reports are really building a very strong, infrastructure around that right now that everybody has to follow very shortly. And I mean, it has started, and it's gonna be a lot more mandated very soon.

Roya So right now nobody, can tell you in confidence where the dyes in a garments are, coming from, what is it really made out of, or what are the other components or chemical ingredients that have gone through it to make that color. With biological color being produced, through controlled fermentation environments, that's going to be completely different.

Roya And now it's inherently traceable, so you can know the details of every batch of the pigment. and, that's not really like an added feature. It's the real property of the biology. It's as,simple. So in five to ten years, I think the [00:50:00] traceability premium is going to be as, commercially significant as the sustainability premium today, and

Roya the only way to provide this, traceability is through the biological production, I think.

Erum Cannot wait to be able to see that. And I think, more and more people want to know. I mean, this is same with food, of course. Just where does it come from, how is it made, what's the process?

Erum And if you're transparent about it, then people will be like, "Okay, I I know now." But hiding it, people get curious. And now that we have, of course, like AI and information at our fingertips, which we've always had, but, like, just being able to say, which brands use bio-made dyes, or which are the safest, or, being able to, discover the information, and then of course use it as a selling point, That's, kinda seems to be,perhaps the, the good way in the world of fashion. Because I think, fast fashion is there, and it's a whole nother topic. But, and people, cherishing more of their products, we need to get there.

Roya Yeah, but, the the conversation about the fast fashion one, I think it's also about shifting that [00:51:00] mindset, shifting the way how we think about it.

Roya Because for us, it was a moment to understand that the problem wasn't really the scale of the production, the speed of the production, or how much we consume in the world. It was, the problem was the chemistry itself. And how do we fix that is, the fundamental overhaul that we can offer, rather than just constantly pointing fingers at, "We consume a lot.

Roya We consume too fast." I'm not saying that we shouldn't rethink that, don't get me wrong, but I think we need to just find, better building blocks to the, issue, not just try to erase the question or,

Erum Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, as long as you can regenerate it, that's important.we can use as much as we want, consume as much as we want, but if you can, do it healthier, safer, and more regenerative, then let's do it.

Erum okay. Roya, so we're at the point of the episode where we have our quick-fire questions.

Roya Oh, gosh.

Erum yeah, you ready?

Roya Yeah.

Erum All right. Let's stretch out. Okay, here we go. Okay. one color you [00:52:00] think the world needs more of right now?

Roya A sustainable black.

Erum So cool. So New York of you, even though you're in Canada.

Roya I belong there.

Karl Yeah. What's a material innovation outside of fashion that has you excited right now?

Roya Oh, my God. a lot of them. A lot of the biomaterial sector in general. I'm a material-obsessed person, everybody, so I can't help it. I can't get around it. The advancement of tools and how now, we can enhance the fermentation and biomanufacturing process is really fascinating to me.

Roya And there's so many different cool technologies that are coming up that I can't wait them, for them to get scaled.

Erum Nice. Awesome. Okay. One sustainability trend you think is actually worth the hype?

Roya Okay, you're gonna find it cliche, but it's off the top of my head. It's basically, the trend right now about the synthetic colors in food.

Roya it's way overdue. It's been talked about for a very long time, and now it's finally getting the attention that is needed, so I think it's [00:53:00] definitely worth paying attention to what you put in your own bodies.

Karl Yeah, 100%. what's one color nature makes better than humans ever could?

Roya Oh, the structural colors.

Roya Oh. The iridescent changing depending on how you, how the light,how they reflect light. It's just so fascinating to me how nature is doing it so beautifully and so, effortlessly really.

Karl Yeah. It's amazing.

Erum All right. And so this is a little bit of a wish list question. If you could collaborate with any brand, living or dead, who would it be?

Roya Ooh. Okay. Can I say two? If I was able to collaborate with an artist, I think I would definitely want Jackson Pollock to create a beautiful art with our colors. That would be like- Wow ... a dream. Yeah. Since you said it could be even dead.

Erum Yeah.

Roya But, in terms of, like, collaboration, I do want to collaborate with,Ooh, this is mainly because I am obsessed with their installation, but I do want to collaborate [00:54:00] with Gentle Monster and come up with a way of storytelling a future where the whole world is dyed with our colorants. And I'm very curious to know with their creative minds, how are they going to tr- teleport in the future and say or storytell the beginning of bio colors.

Roya Yeah.

Karl I love that. I'm, like, a huge fan of Gentle Monster. Love that brand.

Roya Same here.

Karl thank you so much for coming on the Grow Everything podcast today. This has been such a great conversation.

Roya Thank you so much for having me. This is always fun to talk to you guys, and I'm excited to listen to every other peer in this process, and hopefully, somehow collaborate together to make this a lot faster.

Erum Yes. Awesome. Okay, Roya, we can't wait to talk to you some more and have you back on as things develop.

Roya See you guys soon.

Erum All right. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.

Roya Bye.

Karl All right, Iram, what did you think of that episode?

Erum finally we got Roya on the podcast. She is such a delight. I mean, we talk to her off the pod a lot, and it was great to finally hear her story and be able to share it with our audience. but we can't emphasize enough how much innovation is happening around this idea of dyes and how urgent it is because of the regulatory environment.

Erum more on the food side here in the United States, but, when these regulations hit fashion, which it hopefully is going to get to that urgency that we're doing [00:56:00] with food Roya is perfectly positioned to do that. And I mean, they're very collaborative. We've been working with her on different types of initiatives, and I love the fact that she's looking at bio dyes to compete with just industry norms.

Erum So it's not just, she's not just an, this is not just another startup. Roya's view was that the category is healthy because companies are taking a generally different technical paths, and broad adoption matters more than any single winner. So we all have to come together. And we had this bio dyes series.

Erum We're talking to so many innovators, and th- they're all different approaches, but there's a lot of work to be done, so let's collaborate. Great perspective. What about you, Carl? What do you think?

Karl Yeah, I mean, I think that collaboration, piece is really important. I think it's something that really made me like Roya more.

Karl I liked her anyway, but like the fact that she seems to really be thinking on that category level as opposed to just on the company level. And then the other thing that she said that stands out, just because it's something that we talk about so much here on Grow Everything, is [00:57:00] i- this idea of performance being the price of entry.

Karl Like they built Light One around industry requirements first because They wanted to meet this idea that you could take a piece of clothes, you have to be able to wash it, rub it. You have these light fastness standards. the dyes have to fit into the existing systems.

Karl But doing that is challenging on its own, but it's a lot less challenging than trying to get a brand to change their systems. You can't make brands do that. That is very challenging, as we've learned. And it reminds me of the episode that you did just a couple weeks ago with Vanessa of Samsara, who also really talked about like being able to move things into a process that already exists.

Karl So kudos to you, Roya, for thinking that way.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. And another big thing that she pointed out, which it's not always just about the science, it's the technology. The technology's there. It all works. I mean, we, doing this bio dye series, we have more, a few more episodes coming up. We've done, five already, and so the technology's there.

Erum The real bottleneck [00:58:00] is the shared risk, and we've talked about this a lot. And one of the clearest takeaways that I received from Roya and, others, is that these brands need to be a part of the risk. They need to engage early. They need to share specs, give feedback, and absorb some of the risk because it's going to benefit them and the consumer, right?

Erum They're kind of in the middle between the two. But a lot of the conversations that she had, and I've heard it from others, that they're just waiting for a fully de-risked solution before they even purchase it. and that's a very hard gap to fill. So who's gonna come in and help rally the troops across innovation, supply chain, brand, and then distribution to consumer?

Erum Like, We're all in it, so how do we all collaborate to make this transition into healthy, safe, high-performing dyes?

Karl Yeah. The other thing that, I love about Roya is she kind of brings this [00:59:00] designer mindset to biology, and

Karl I think when we look across all the "Grow Everything" podcast episodes, there's a couple of categories that stand out. One is biomanufacturing, of course, but design and biodesign is something that we've touched upon a lot over episodes. And being ableto use biology changes that design mindset and it gives designers a much broader palette to work with.

Karl I mean, go back to the beginning of this episode where we're talking about computationally designed organisms. When designers get their hands on those, like what kinds of great things are gonna be done? Roya framed variation in biology not as a defect but as information, which opens up a different relationship between manufacturing, design, and process control.

Karl And so I think being able to have designers look at biology as a tool and incorporate it into existing systems, but making those systems better, is something that I'm very excited about.

Erum Yes. So [01:00:00] Roya, we love you. Thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise and perspective, with us. it's something that even though there's, you're working on very, something very specific when it comes to bioinnovation, it can be heard and felt across the board, across many different types of industries, which is what we touch on here on the "Grow Everything."

Erum We talk about how biology is transforming every industry. So with that, I wanted to also say for our audience and everyone that's listening, we will be at World Biomarkets in Omaha this September. And so if you are interested in commercializing biology, especially on the industrial level, this is the conference for you.

Erum So use promo code GROW EVERYTHING to get 25% off. Carl and I will be moderating some panels that are going to be amazing and really going to help people think about, yes, biology is not just a science stuck in a lab.

Erum It is a way that we can commercialize and change the world that we live in.

Karl if [01:01:00] you're on LinkedIn, please follow the Grow Everything page. thank you for tuning in to the "Grow Everything" podcast. If you have any questions or comments, please do reach out to us.

Karl Our contact information is in the show notes. we love hearing from our listeners. And don't forget to subscribe to our Substack. Let's grow.

Erum Let's grow.