Tierra Biosciences (formerly Synvitrobio, Inc.) is a VC-backed startup leveraging cell-free synthetic biology, automation, computer learning, and metagenomics to identify new molecules and new chemistry from Nature’s genetic datasets.
The world’s hardest problems of the 20th century were solved by molecules identified from Nature. Antibiotics eradicated infectious disease, while fertilizers fed an exponentially growing population. Yet, in the 21st century finding new molecules has been challenging, despite all of our new technology.
10 trillion different species exist in this world, each with the ability to produce the molecules and chemistry we need today. The instructions for making these molecules reside in genetic datasets, or DNA. To date, unlocking this dataset has been extremely challenging - by some estimates, we’ve only looked at 10,000 of 10 trillion.
At Tierra, we’ve built the world’s fastest translation engine that unlocks this dataset.
“Tierra’s platform is thus able to screen for potential [molecules] at a rate limited only by the availability of new DNA sequences.”
the economist | May 6-12, 2017
As featured in:
The Economist, “Cell-free biotech will make for better products,” May 6-12, 2017. Front Page Feature.
TechCrunch, “As biological manufacturing moves to the mainstream, Synvitrobio rebrands and raises cash,” September 11, 2018.
Medium, “Why I believe in cell-free biology,” February 19, 2019.
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