63. From Silicon to Sequences: DNA Data Storage with DNALI's Kyle Tomek

[00:00:00] Erum: Kyle Tomek. Hi, how are you? Thanks for coming on the Grow Everything podcast.

[00:00:05] Kyle: Hey thanks for having me. I'm super excited, to share what I've been working on and discuss DNA and all its uses.

[00:00:13] Erum: yeah, we first met, at a side event, for SynBioBeta. There was an event hosted by I believe IndieBio and maybe Pillar or some other VC fund. And we were in line getting drinks. And I'm like, what do you have in your hand? And you had this tiny vial.

[00:00:28] Erum: and you were telling me about Denali and everything that you do, but and of course we're there to network, but I'm actually really curious about your background, do you have a biotech background? Share a little bit about your science history.

[00:00:39] Kyle: Yeah, so I did my undergraduate studies at Michigan State University, where I studied human biology and chemical engineering. from there, I worked in industry for a while as a chemical engineer, then really, through listening to podcasts and reading scientific articles really got inspired by biotech specifically and realized I needed to get a PhD.

[00:01:01] Kyle: came back to school at NC State and that's where I did my PhD, where I was studying DNA based data storage systems and how to scale those into the real world. implementations and we wanted wanted to understand how to take those and make them something that everybody can use. that's really where we started Denali.

[00:01:20] Kyle: and the reason that I was at, SymbioBeta as well, we have DNA data storage that we can program DNA strands to encode digital information, whether it's text files, images, videos, things like that, and actually put it into DNA strands. And that's what I was carrying around, the DNA drive that we have that, can store a million terabytes in, a milliliter of liquid.

[00:01:42] Kyle: in the drop of, water,

[00:01:43] Karl: That's amazing. But I want to rewind a spec. Did you just say that after you'd done your undergrad, you'd listened to a bunch of podcasts do your PhD?

[00:01:52] Kyle: yeah. So one of the ones that remember listening to, it might've been early days of podcasting really, but, the journal, they have their own podcast that covers different scientific findings throughout the week and month. and that was something that I was listening to at work and realizing that, oh, there's so much inspirational stuff going on.

[00:02:09] Kyle: I want to go be part of that.

[00:02:11] Karl: That's so cool.

[00:02:12] Kyle: this is a beautiful platform to be able to inspire the next generation of scientists.

[00:02:16] Kyle: So I really appreciate you guys doing this stuff.

[00:02:19] Karl: Yeah, actually, we do get a fair number of people who come to us who are the next generation of scientists who either comment or want to talk about, what we're doing and what we see. I'm curious because you said that a drop of water could hold. Did you say 100 terabytes?

[00:02:33] Karl: what is that compared to on a disk drive, compared to what, a laptop house?

[00:02:38] Kyle: So I actually said a drop of water can store a million terabytes. So even more than that. if you think about what your phone is nowadays, it's probably about a terabyte of data storage. So something that fits in the palm of your hand. imagine a million cell phones, how much space that would take up.

[00:02:55] Kyle: DNA can store all that same information down into literally a drop of water.

[00:02:59] Karl: Now, and I know there is a data storage problem which is part of the reason why people have been looking at DNA as a storage technology. Could you tell us what that problem is?

[00:03:11] Kyle: Right, so already, we've run into as a society of a problem of being able to store all the information we want, to keep around. We produce more data than we can store. that's something that I personally struggle with, the laptop I have, it was full, I couldn't update it, so I had to go delete a bunch of photos and programs off my computer, that's happening in our pockets and on our laptops, day to day, everyone across the world, but then also at a larger scale, companies are really having to triage what information they're storing, and now with the advent of AI, We want more and more and more data to be able to use to train models and things like that.

[00:03:49] Kyle: If we don't have enough space to do so, we're going to be limited in our technologies. So really pushing the scale of how much data we can store and doing so in an environmentally friendly way, is really important for future development and innovation across the globe.

[00:04:04] Erum: Yeah, I mean, that's incredible, I'm glad that you touched on the amount of data that's required to really use AI, in different ways, but can you dig little deeper into DNA data storage will unlock new possibilities and particularly in the field of biotechnology.

[00:04:21] Kyle: DNA data storage, is something that, so many groups are working on now and there's a big push for it. and I think a lot of the innovation that needs to happen to get to scalable DNA data storage is driving even more innovation. it's something that we're doing at Denali, we started Denali as a DNA data storage company as A next step of my PhD to commercialize what I had been working on.

[00:04:45] Kyle: But we quickly realized that, customers we were talking to, they wanted terabytes or petabytes or exabytes. So more and more data to be able to store. But we could only make kilobytes or megabytes in. economically friendly way. we started asking ourselves, how we actually to push that scale, and it's, through DNA synthesis.

[00:05:05] Kyle: So, making DNA strands from scratch. we've come up with a process to do so, using different biological machinery, so different enzymes that our cells or natural cells, use. we're using this new production method, to make DNA. And then instead of just pushing scale, scale, scale, we're also realizing that we can make more valuable DNA.

[00:05:25] Kyle: so this is where now making a chemically modified and chemically tagged DNA that Better mimics natural DNA. all of the work that needs to be done to push towards DNA data storage scale has. increase the innovation at DNA synthesis and DNA sequencing companies and research labs.

[00:05:43] Karl: Now, why is it that DNA, makes an ideal storage solution? I mean, I want to get into the mechanics of going from digital to physical, but what makes DNA so good storing information?

[00:05:56] Kyle: if you think about what DNA is, as humans and all living things are built on the blueprint of DNA. And it's something that's been around since the beginning of life. And it's something that is very durable. in the right conditions. scientists have found woolly mammoth DNA that dates to over two million years old.

[00:06:15] Kyle: so if you store it in the proper conditions, DNA is On the human scale, an eternal data storage medium. it's very durable in that way. I think the biggest, benefit of DNA data storage is that DNA is such a small molecule that we can store so much more information in it than the transistors on chips that we have in computers right now. So it's a million times more, dense than current technologies in the, computers and phones that we're using right now.

[00:06:42] Erum: How much data is stored in our DNA to make a human? Do you know that?

[00:06:49] Kyle: the estimate is about three gigabytes.

[00:06:52] Kyle: so the human genome is three gigabytes. So that's, it. I mean, something that's so simple, but at the same time, we're a very complex system. And so that's these chemical modifications and these chemical handles that, are bound to DNA actually increase complexity.

[00:07:07] Kyle: every cell in our body has the same three gigabytes of a blueprint. But our skin cells are different than our muscle cells, and our, neurons are different than our bones. there's something else going on. above the genome that is allowing this complex system to self assemble. And that's where you might've heard of it as the epigenome.

[00:07:28] Kyle: So the next level on top of the genome, this is where there's chemical methylation patterns and different, structures that occur that turn on or turn off different genes to allow cells to become different from each other and form pattern in a complex system like a human.

[00:07:45] Karl: I think most people don't realize, but it's. Apparent to us as, scientists that like you said, every cell in the body basically contains the same set of instructions and the genome, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's three meters worth of DNA. if you were to stretch it out, so it's a fairly long molecule that every cell has, but it's.

[00:08:06] Karl: A molecule. So you never see it unless you isolate it. And even then you have to, have special microscopy. But density, as you've said, is something that I think is unparalleled to anything else we've ever discovered.

[00:08:18] Kyle: Right. So that three gigabytes is in each of our cells. And then our bodies, I believe, haven't reviewed the numbers in a while, but we have trillions of cells in our body. so three gigabytes times a trillion is literally a world's amount of data stored in each of us. so the three of us and the DNA in our bodies would literally solve part of the data storage shortage that's happening At data centers and on our phones and computers across the world,

[00:08:45] Karl: It's amazing. It's just mind blowing. Kyle. Your background is both in chemical and molecular biomolecular engineering. But taking that expertise and focusing it on DNA storage, how has that influenced your focus on DNA storage? And then how is synthetic biology involved in all that?

[00:09:03] Kyle: So engineering has really, made me think about systems and building systems in a very efficient and scalable way. I work in a science lab doing research, and every time I came up on the path of, okay, we got something to work, should we really understand the fundamentals of it, really drill in the nitty gritty details, or should we take it and use it to do something cool?

[00:09:26] Kyle: I always took that latter step, and I said, We've got this thing working. Let's just engineer it to do something cool. that's where I really do think my training is more engineering focused versus science and biology focused. because I want to be turning the things I'm working on into practical real world, solutions so that's why I started Denali. then synthetic biology, it's always hard to define synthetic biology, I think, but I think it's, really engineering biology. To do things that are useful, that is basically exactly what I just described of what engineering is. And so I think synthetic biology is more engineering discipline, than like a strict fundamental biology and biological understanding.

[00:10:04] Kyle: so that's really where our work has been focused. honestly, what's more synthetic biology than using DNA strands to store digital information?

[00:10:13] Erum: Yeah. That's a pretty amazing that, for your PhD, you always thought about scale from the beginning, You went into this. Discipline thinking like, all right, you need to find some fundamental truths. That's what a PhD does. You have to figure out, some very deep information think of that deep information and to go into the real world and scale it up.

[00:10:30] Erum: That's a lot of mental gymnastics. That is a lot of mental gymnastics. Denali, you guys in the beginning stored, megabytes, kilobytes. what is the most you've stored and what type of files or data did you store specifically?

[00:10:46] Kyle: the files that we stored in our, early work were basically NC State related. so we did the NC State logo, the College of Engineering logo, we did the Wolfpack logo. And then we did a zip file of the Bill of Rights and the text file of the Declaration of Independence. some later files that we did, again, North Carolina related, we were storing.

[00:11:08] Kyle: the images from the Wright brothers first flight, showing that we can access those in different, resolutions and different sizes and things like that. although we were focused on scalability. Our projects were never about, making the biggest files or saving the biggest database, because that was just really expensive to do, and as an academic research lab, funds are limited, and so we had to be really, tricky and, creative about the way that we were actually discussing scale while, working with these small systems, and so what we were doing is basically adding in a bunch of randomized DNA to mimic what random data would look like in a database.

[00:11:42] Kyle: the databases that we were mimicking were about five terabytes, which I think was least at the time, the largest, scale. But again, those couple of files that we worked on were, a few kilobytes.

[00:11:53] Karl: Can you walk us through what this looks like on a practical level? Like I want a copy of file to DNA, I've got a DNA drive, does it plug into my USB? what does that drive look like and tell me what it looks like today and what it might look like in five or ten years?

[00:12:09] Kyle: Right now, the systems that are DNA data storage are all disparate systems. us as a lab, were designing the DNA strands to encode the information on a computer and in a spreadsheet. And that spreadsheet, we would then upload to a company to buy The library of DNA strands, and then they would ship that to us, that came in like a powdered form, it's freeze dried DNA, basically a small speck of dust that's storing all of our files, then we did the manipulation on our bench, in the lab, so it was a lot of pipetting and manual work, from there, once we accessed our files, we would send those to DNA sequencing services, Illumina has sequencing services, but we were using the lab, on campus, our core facility to do DNA sequencing. from there we would get back a data file that had all the A's, C's, G's, and T's of DNA that we would have to decode, basically the reverse type of encoding on our computers. And so everything was really spread out, a lot of manual work, What's really exciting is that, there are DNA synthesis companies and DNA sequencing companies both focusing on making, machines to do both of those steps and then miniaturizing those machines.

[00:13:20] Kyle: so now we can start envisioning a future where both of those steps are integrated into the same device, along with the computing power to be able to read and write DNA as well. I like to think about the iPhone 20 or the iPhone 50 actually having a DNA drive in it, and being able to have DNA data storage, in our hands and in our pockets eventually.

[00:13:41] Erum: Yeah, that's incredible. I'm sure Apple would be very happy about that. just be able to have more data in your pocket. trying to think of what the world would be like to have that much data, and have it accessible and insights that you need for your health.

[00:13:55] Erum: I mean, that's something that. I'm sure that you've thought about, you what are the potential real world applications of your technology in healthcare specifically?

[00:14:04] Kyle: healthcare specifically, storing things like medical records, or storing things like the databases of, 23andMe or any DNA sequencing company who have human health records that are able to be computed on, that's something that we could augment their data storage to be able to make those, storage and compute processes more efficient or more thorough, Where I think Denali specifically can have the biggest impact in health care is where we've pivoted to in making chemically modified DNA.

[00:14:33] Kyle: So this is DNA that mimics what's going on in our cells with this epigenetic pattern. if we can better mimic DNA that's happening in our lives, in our bodies, in disease states, if we can better replicate that in the lab, then we can have a better understanding in how to diagnose and treat those types of diseases.

[00:14:51] Kyle: not only diseases, but aging in general, the epigenetic. pattern is really thought of as a biological clock. so if we can better understand that biological clock, we might be able to turn it backwards and slow aging and things like that using these types of modified and chemically labeled DNAs.

[00:15:08] Karl: So you're saying that this ability to modify DNA through methylation patterns also gives you another tool for being able to store data in it? am I understanding that correctly?

[00:15:19] Kyle: So we can use modified DNA as a way to both store more information and then make that information more accessible. And those first, Files that we were accessing out of our databases and in the research lab, we were using modified DNA and using chemical handles to be able to manipulate the DNA around.

[00:15:39] Kyle: we would make. a modified version that would allow us to distinguish it from the unmodified version, and that allowed us to be really selective and efficient in the way we accessed our information from those. the methylated or some modified DNA basically can be used to represent a different base.

[00:15:57] Kyle: so instead of four letters of DNA, we can now have five, six, and so on letters of DNA that we store information in, which would allow us to encode information and data much more densely.

[00:16:09] Karl: That's amazing.

[00:16:10] Erum: for this I guess the modified DNA, data storage, are you still sequencing the DNA to read it out?

[00:16:16] Kyle: Right. We still need to do DNA sequencing. so what traditionally is happening for DNA data storage in the sequencing step is that you take the entire library. And sequence it. you're sequencing things that are files that you're not actually interested in opening, but they're just showing up as background noise.

[00:16:34] Kyle: And what we were able to do using that modified DNA is actually grab and pull out the files of interest to be able to better understand what's going on. and more efficiently use the DNA sequencing platform. it makes it faster, makes it more cost effective and everything.

[00:16:50] Karl: I know there's a consortia of companies that are working on DNA storage. I think notably Microsoft is probably one of the bigger well known names in that. I remember seeing that over Christmas, a company was selling a memory card for a thousand bucks. how does that work?

[00:17:08] Karl: do you know what the card was and it actually worked? Ha

[00:17:11] Kyle: the DNA data storage Alliance is a group of companies and research labs who are focusing on DNA based data storage. Like you said, Microsoft is one of the founding members, Twist Bioscience, Quantum, Seagate. there's data storage companies, there's biotech companies, there's research labs, all focusing on this, we get together monthly and, share ideas and build a roadmap of how the industry is going to look over the next few years with, building in, standards for companies to follow to make sure that, these systems are interoperable, Company A can make a data storage device and company B can as well, making a universal USB port sort of thing for data storage. and then yes, Biomemory is a French company. they are working in the space and they came out with a DNA card, it looks like a credit card and then there's a chip portion of it that is actually storing, I think it's dry lyophilized DNA.

[00:18:03] Kyle: to my knowledge. I think this is the first commercial application, where a customer can order any sort of DNA that they want, whether it's a, family photo album, or if companies can start building, libraries of these cards to start doing archival data storage. but that was super exciting to see, that first commercial application out in the real world.

[00:18:23] Kyle: hopefully that continues to happen.

[00:18:25] Erum: I know that You have this new process of modified DNA. Are you looking to work directly with, big tech companies orother data storage companies or trying to make something more accessible to consumers?

[00:18:38] Erum: I what are your thoughts there in terms of your business development?

[00:18:42] Kyle: our business strategy has definitely been, changing and kind of morphing as we've been, doing customer discovery and really understanding the market. we are currently focusing on the modified DNA product as a research tool. So to enable researchers to use it in their labs to do better science and do more efficient science.

[00:19:03] Kyle: we've now made a sale earlier this year, the first revenue in, and so we're going to continue to scale that, through developing the process, building out more, Products in our catalog also. automating the process to be able to fulfill more orders, working with more and more different researchers, focusing in different aspects of biological research, whether it's genetic engineering, synthetic biology, disease diagnosis, treatment. that's really our short term goal. And then the other longer term goal is to be able to synthesize and manufacture enough DNA to be able to get to scalable DNA data storage systems. And so then that's where we would start either building an end to end solution ourselves, or start partnering with the different companies in the DNA data storage Alliance to build DNA storage systems that are accessible to everyday people and companies to augment their data storage capabilities.

[00:19:55] Erum: Yeah. Congratulations on turning on the spigot, first sale.

[00:19:59] Erum: So that's awesome. Congrats. That's awesome.

[00:20:04] Kyle: Yeah, we're super excited.

[00:20:05] Karl: can you give us some more examples like, what are the real world applications of, your technology outside of health care? we talked about archiving, but where do you see, DNA storage, really having its biggest impact? And when, you said that the DNA storage Alliance has working on a roadmap.

[00:20:22] Karl: When does commercialization happen?

[00:20:26] Kyle: I guess because Biom memory has come out with this new DNA card Commercialization has started. and now it's just building off of that. I think for data storage, um, The biggest thing is just this, massive amount of information that we have, whether we're just inundated with, copies of photos, YouTube videos, saving recordings like this one, and, really needing more and more data storage, I already talked about health records, financial records, legal records, things like that, there's mandates to have to keep your data. around for 7, 25, 100 years, just in case there's litigation and things like that. And so I think it will really make those industries much more efficient as well.

[00:21:05] Kyle: I think the impact of the short term, modified DNA synthesis that we're working on, is going to be something that. I think just really accelerates what we're seeing in synthetic biology and what we're seeing in places like, SynBioBeta. there was companies there that are using, microbes to mining heavy metals and create products that they then used in downhill skis and things like that.

[00:21:28] Kyle: we want to be able to provide DNA as a tool to allow people to do that sort of work faster, more efficiently, with different. sorts of microbes. there's billions of different microbes, in our gut or in the soil outside. And for the most part, they're really inaccessible for us to engineer because, they have immune systems that are based on modified DNA.

[00:21:50] Kyle: And so if we can make those microbes more engineerable, we can produce better products, change health and, engineer systems to do really cool things. at Denali, we aren't the ones really dreaming up those really cool things to do. We just want to empower and work with customers for them to, fulfill their dreams and do that cool work.

[00:22:10] Karl: actually, it brings up two thoughts for me. One is, we're talking about the amount of digital data that is being generated, photos, recordings. we live that with a podcast because we constantly have to be moving files around. But I think what maybe people don't understand too, is that, you know, not is there this exponential amount of data being generated, but like, soon as you start sequencing, More humans.

[00:22:35] Karl: That's a huge amount of data that has to be stored somewhere. And then it has to be interrogated by different programs. what I'm remembering is, there's a scene in Blade Runner 2049 where they go to look for some files and they go into this huge room that has all these archives and, the memory is stored in Basically, these spheres that have this floaty liquid smoke in them, so I'm kind of imagining something like that, with these DNA drives sometime in the future.

[00:23:02] Kyle: Yeah, that's really interesting. that actually reminds me there's a company cash DNA. they are working on these microbeads storage containers for DNA data storage, Their short term focus is on biobanking, so storing, human samples, that are clinically diagnostic samples and things like that, but they have these, tiny, tiny glass beads that they store the DNA in, and then, can use those to store for longer, and they can manipulate those to search databases, it's really, I think, almost exactly like you're just describing in Blade Runner there.

[00:23:35] Karl: DNA is a super fascinating molecule learned this a while ago, not only is it this incredibly dense store of information, but it also is fireproof. you can put DNA on the surface of something and it it's basically flame retardant.

[00:23:49] Kyle: I guess I haven't heard that before, I mean, that, would be really amazing, you know. The, DNA that we're storing, we do have to make sure that it's not really exposed to oxygen or water too much. We have to dry it out and put a inert gas in there with it. because oxidation happens, hydrolysis happens, UV damage happens.

[00:24:07] Kyle: so that's where kind of storing it away in the right conditions, is really important, but what's super interesting, like I said, that, wooly mammoth DNA was found 2 million years old, that's just sitting there in a fossilized bone. again, nature can really be what inspires us to store these things in the right conditions. Maybe draw inspiration there.

[00:24:27] Karl: Amazing.

[00:24:28] Erum: Like the iPhone 30 with the DNA data storage could be made of bone and gas.

[00:24:34] Kyle: Right. Yeah. heard it here first.

[00:24:38] Karl: Yeah, exactly. you and Denali are based out of Raleigh, North Carolina. And I know that North Carolina has a very vibrant, biotech, ecosystem. What's that like? How does it benefit you?

[00:24:51] Kyle: Raleigh and the Research Triangle Park region, is a super talent rich region in the country. there's multiple universities and just to name a few NC State, UNC Duke, we're all right in this area and it's one of the highest populations of PhDs in the country.

[00:25:07] Kyle: so looking for talent, As Denali grows is going to be really nice to have talent pool really in our backyard. I think at least biotech related what, the issue has been until more recently is that, a lot of the research and development jobs were in, San Francisco or Boston.

[00:25:25] Kyle: And so keeping that talent in this area was somewhat difficult. we have. biotech companies, but it was a lot of manufacturing, you Biogen has these massive facilities. You don't really need the PhD. You need some PhDs there, but you don't need them to be doing R& D work. We have a really strong history of tech, NetApp, Cisco, Red Hat, Apple's moving here now, so there's a huge, tech community as well, and that's where a lot of the investment has been made, so a lot of investors, we interface with.

[00:25:54] Kyle: they're mostly software SAS company, investors that, are looking for that. now I think there's more and more of a push of biotech related innovation, you deeper technology coming out of the universities and each university. really has their own research commercialization department.

[00:26:11] Kyle: So NC State has been really helpful for us to not only write our patents, but come up with a licensing agreement for Denali to Basically own the rights to those patents and then, programs within the university for funding mentorship and all those things. so I think the community, has all the things, the universities, the talent, rich, pool of people that work at the new companies.

[00:26:32] Kyle: And then investment is coming along with, a push for deeper technology and biotechnology specifically.

[00:26:38] Erum: Yeah, and he recently won, a grant from North Carolina. It was a seed grant. I was like, 000. how do you plan on using that? I mean, it doesn't seem like a lot for what you're doing, but just curious your thoughts.

[00:26:50] Kyle: Yeah. So Denali just was awarded the NC idea seed grant. that is a 50, 000 award. comes with mentorship as well. And what we're going to use that for is, short term, technology development, process automation, then customer discovery and acquisition. so those are The three main things we're going to be doing. it's some benchtop work, it's automating pipetting robots, and then really getting out there, interfacing with customers to really understand what they want to be able to do and how we can enable them to do so. I think Denali, We're in a really interesting spot because, we have this working technology that we've already made sales on.

[00:27:29] Kyle: we're a biotech company that is operating more like a, tool company that is allowing. Researchers to do the work want to do and so we don't need the huge amount of grant money or VC investment. what our plan is, to gain customers, keep growing in a bootstrapped way.

[00:27:46] Erum: I love that. That's the spirit of entrepreneurship, Really to go for the customers, get the money, exchange the value. investors come with a whole bunch of other drama, I guess you could say. So if you could avoid it, that's great. really love that. But there's also a lot of other grant opportunities I'm sure you can go after.

[00:28:04] Erum: one that actually comes to mind, and an interesting application is. a funding opportunity called Trish, I forget what it stands for, but, we interviewed John Cumbers just before this, and he had posted on LinkedIn about, what are the solutions for deep space missions?

[00:28:20] Erum: Thinking of the data storage problem for space missions, I always bring it to space, Carl's laughing, I know he's laughing. So it's could be actually a very interesting avenue. It really stretched the mind of like, okay, you can bring a lot of stuff up in space, but you can bring a couple of drops of DNA, not going to be super heavy, and that DNA can store a lot of data.

[00:28:41] Erum: It could be an interesting opportunity to get more money.

[00:28:45] Erum: That's non dilutive.

[00:28:47] Kyle: I mean, that's , thought was inspired at, again, symbiobeta, they had these breakout sessions and, that's where I started thinking about, yeah, NASA, and the space missions. exactly right with, launching things into space.

[00:28:59] Kyle: I think it's something like, One kilogram of payload increases the amount of what you're launching in a rocket by like eight kilograms. weight and space and volume are so important on these space missions and launching things off. That, you put a couple of drops of liquid or you dry the powder of DNA and you're sending terabytes and beyond, up to the moon or Mars and things like that.

[00:29:22] Karl: Yeah, it's also expensive. Even with SpaceX, at its peak, the price of a kilogram goes down to, I think, 200. So it's still fairly expensive to get things up. I didn't realize that it also multiplies the amount of weight that you're sending up, but makes perfect sense. so looking ahead, Kyle, what are some exciting advancements that you see, when it comes to both DNA storage and synthesis?

[00:29:44] Kyle: for DNA synthesis specifically, longer pieces of DNA, again, I'm going to keep saying that. At SinBioBeta, this is something that we saw, there was a whole stage full of presenters, one after the other, talking about how much longer they can make DNA. companies like Eligen, Ansa, they're making gene length and beyond pieces of DNA.

[00:30:04] Kyle: And so this is going to allow researchers to plug and play bigger pieces of DNA that do bigger and better things in their research. that's super exciting. they are direct potential partners for us. they make long DNA, we make modified DNA. And so maybe we can make long modified DNA together.

[00:30:21] Kyle: DNA sequencing wise, Illumina and other companies in that space, pushing the boundaries of higher and higher throughput of DNA sequencing. So really making, human genomes. sequencing the human genome come down from a million dollars to a thousand now to a hundred dollars and really pushing that down.

[00:30:37] Kyle: Maybe it'll only cost a dollar to sequence the human genome very soon. And, that's going to have huge implications in, customized healthcare and all of those sorts of things. Again, on DNA sequencing, companies like Oxford Nanopore, who are really calling real time DNA sequencing, where instead of doing a batch sequence, it takes 24 to 36 hours to read all the information, you're actually getting data out on your laptop, because they have a thumb drive size sequencer, you're getting data out within a few seconds or minutes.

[00:31:06] Kyle: so that's something that we're seeing that miniaturization and real time. sequencing that you can draw a direct line to putting it in a phone, putting it in your pocket. are the things that are super exciting.

[00:31:17] Karl: That's super exciting. And what about the future of biotechnology, where do you think we're going in the next 5 10 15 years?

[00:31:24] Kyle: Yeah, I think we've all seen it. and we've been hearing about it on your podcast. but basically let's make more and more things out of biological products, using biological systems, meat products from mushrooms and, clothes made more sustainably with, without the petroleum products.

[00:31:42] Kyle: like I said, there was a booth with snow skis made out of biological products. so that's super interesting to see the tangible things coming out in the real world. And then I think engineering microbes to do cool processes. So like mining heavy metals, using microbes to digest plastic, that's obviously a huge problem in pollution, but instead of recycling, maybe you can just throw some microbes on your pile or into the Pacific Ocean, the island of plastic trash, and get that to be, basically chewed up and spit out into, helpful.

[00:32:12] Kyle: products.

[00:32:14] Erum: Kyle, I'm sure you're always, busy reading research papers, but are there any books or movies that you have read or watched that inspire you in this world of biotech that you can share with our audience?

[00:32:25] Kyle: for sure. So shout out for DNA storage. , if you watch Fahrenheit 451, I think it's the newest iteration of that, book. spoiler alert, at the end, they store all the information in like a bird. They put it in DNA and put it in a bird. The bird flies away and they're like, okay, there goes all the books in recorded history.

[00:32:46] Kyle: cool shout out. , but book wise, book trilogy that I read recently, the three body problem. Was super interesting. these aliens that live far away, they send technology ahead of time before they come and invade to educate some of our population and get them to be, on their side.

[00:33:03] Kyle: it was really interesting that they sent a small amount of information. So thinking about DNA, you could send a bunch of DNA out ahead of time to be able to go populate some new planet or something like that. but then throughout the whole story, you never even actually meet the aliens or anything like that.

[00:33:17] Kyle: there's just so much human innovation that's spurred by this common goal of getting ready for this invasion that I think. We should try to harness and like, think about these common goals that are impacting all of humanity and really come together and innovate and make new things and make the world a better place.

[00:33:35] Karl: that's super interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think China has a policy. They actually have rules for science fiction. because they want, know, the population to be very science and engineering literate and they realize how important that is. And don't know if it's a product of that or if it inspired that policy, but great book.

[00:33:50] Karl: I've only read the first one. I read the other ones and I know there's a series coming out, maybe two series.

[00:33:55] Erum: is that book banned in China or is it welcomed?

[00:33:58] Karl: No, no, it's not banned, but I do know, you were to do a search on Google for China's science fiction policy or something like that, you'd see that they have very specific rules in terms of like what they encourage authors to write about a way to inspire the population.

[00:34:12] Karl: that's a, awesome book.

[00:34:13] Karl: And, I'll have to read the other two in the trilogy. think I knew, but I never dug into the other ones.

[00:34:18] Kyle: Yeah. the two sequel books, that's really where you can start dreaming of what the world might look like, they have unlimited power sources. And so they have, nothing has cords on it anymore. And like energy is being transmit throughout the space around us and, there's satellites that people are living on and ships that are being sent into the cosmos that are going to colonize, different planets and things like that.

[00:34:40] Kyle: It's all super cool.

[00:34:41] Karl: That's really cool. Well, I think on that note, we should, end the podcast on that positive note.

[00:34:46] Kyle: Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much. It's been a blast, just to peek into the future and see how we're working towards those goals.

[00:34:54] Karl: Thank you so much, Kyle. Really appreciate you coming on.

[00:34:57] Kyle: Thank you.

[00:34:58] Erum: Yeah. And are we

[00:34:58] Erum: going to see you at a Symbiobeta this year?

[00:35:01] Kyle: I'm hoping to get out there again for sure. I might be in the lab working on that tech development, at that point, but that's a really good place to connect with potential customers and partners. So, it's definitely a goal to get out there.

[00:35:11] Karl: Awesome.

[00:35:12] Erum: yeah, we'll be out there and, we'll sing the praises of Denali see, we could partner you up with. All

[00:35:18] Kyle: Awesome.