Chapter 816: Chapter 503: Arrival at the Destination, Shallow Water Fishmen of the Rapids Tribe

Everyone has heard of software developer conferences—but have you heard of a bio developer conference? Starting yesterday, the world’s first Synbiopunk2021 and Bio Developer Conference was held in Shanghai.

This year’s conference takes "Link to Open" as its theme, aiming to promote linkage among different communities across the entire Engineering biology industry, to foster a better ecological environment that advances biotech product development, and to open up brand-new connections within the Engineering biology ecosystem. Experts gathered in force, and over a hundred corporate representatives and numerous investors also attended.

Using DNA as the code, professional bio developers have arrived

Synthetic biology is a new interdisciplinary science of the 21st century. It can use E. coli to produce bulk chemical materials and free us from dependence on petroleum-based feedstocks; use yeast to produce artemisinic acid and Rare ginsenosides, reducing costs and promoting new drug Development; use Engineering bacteria that do not "collaterally damage" normal cells but specifically attack cancer cells...

"In this era of ’convergence’, the R&D and development capabilities of life sciences and biotechnology urgently need to be enhanced," said Zhao Guoping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at the conference. Synthetic biology adopts the "bottom-up" concept of Engineering, breaking the boundary between "Nature" and "non-Nature": from systematically characterizing biological macromolecules in the natural world that possess functions such as catalysis and regulation, turning them into standardized "components", to creating brand-new biological parts and cellular "chassis" such as "modules" and "circuits", and constructing Artificial life systems for various purposes.

Just as the IT industry has software engineers who write code, bio developers use DNA as the "code" and focus on upstream innovation in biotechnology and new product development. According to Guo Haotian, founder of Little Panda Biology (Shenzhen Xunzhu Biotechnology Co., Ltd.), the initiator of Synbiopunk2021, in recent years the division of labor in the biotech industry has become increasingly refined. Within the industry chain, an intermediate group has emerged: they neither study basic mechanisms nor engage in clinical trials or scale-up manufacturing, but instead specialize in strain development for fermentation products, reconstruction of chassis microorganisms, protein drug design, and even molecular breeding and organoid modification. Within the industry, this group is known as bio developers.

Images provided by Wenhui Turning "sugar" into Gold, the ingenious uses of bio development are many

What are bio developers good for? Zhao Xin Yan, chairman of FinTech, used the rapidly growing perfume industry in recent years as an example. Sandalwood is a precious fragrance extracted from sandalwood trees, and each kilogram of sandalwood can sell for up to 2,000 US dollars. A technology that biosynthesizes sandalwood from sugar can bring the price down to 2,000 yuan per kilogram. Beyond lowering prices, biosynthesis technologies can drastically shorten plant cultivation cycles and improve safety. A fragrance extract that would otherwise require a year’s production from 150,000 mu of flower fields can, via biosynthesis, be obtained in just five days in a Petri dish.

FinTech is researching an Artificial synthetic method for the "king of fragrances" — Dragon-Subduing Saliva Ether, a fixative described as having a "subtle, velvety softness." Zhao Xin Yan noted that if this substance is not added, a perfume can last at most 40 minutes; with it, the scent can linger for more than four hours. Therefore, almost all high-end perfumes contain Dragon-Subduing Saliva Ether.

At present, the company has already achieved mass production from Linalool to Lavender Lactone and is urgently in need of developing the next step in synthetic technology.

The conference also hosted a sustainable Development challenge, which aims to unleash biological potential and support sustainable Development in various Domains by offering diverse biological solutions. Teams from many universities, including Tsinghua University, East China University of Science and Technology, Jiangnan University and Shanghai Science and Technology University, took part in on-site competition.

Providing basic "computing power" for life sciences 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Just as IT workers need computing power, bio developers also require high-throughput, low-cost "development tools". The emergence of Little Panda Biology’s ultra-high-throughput vector testing platform has solved many of the problems faced by bio developers.

"In the past, we often encountered this situation: on the one hand, frontline developers in laboratories were unaware that there were already excellent tools on the market to help them accelerate R&D Speed, reduce costs and cut down on repetitive labor; on the other hand, institutions with platform-level capabilities found it difficult to reach customers in their daily operations and often had to invest heavily in promotion," said Guo Haotian. Little Panda Biology can provide cloud laboratory services for protein recombination at the million Quantity Level, six orders of magnitude higher than internationally used tools, at only one percent of the cost of Ordinary tools.

This "cost-performance ratio" is made possible by Little Panda Biology’s cell programming technology based on synthetic biology. It is an entirely new experimental approach: put simply, you provide bacteria with a segment of DNA code and let them "work on their own" inside the cell.

As a Shenzhen startup, why come to Shanghai to hold a conference? Guo Haotian frankly admitted that they have their eye on the high-quality biopharmaceutical resources in Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta. As a kind of "basic computing power" in life sciences, this tool can be linked to virtually all biopharmaceutical industries and provide them with high-quality services.

Yu Chuan’s Drifting covers several key points, yet it runs into problems when it comes to stringing them together. If we look from the protagonist’s perspective, what do we see? The protagonist returns to his hometown, and the reason for going back is that he doesn’t have much time left. Pneumoconiosis is an awkward disease, and for many people in this country, it is effectively a death sentence. Carrying the heavy burden of his illness, the protagonist returns to his hometown—what kind of life trials does he ultimately have to face there? In the midst of all sorts of hardships, how should his state of mind after falling ill be presented? This is the first core theme the author wants to convey to everyone: to care about pneumoconiosis, or rather, to begin paying attention to a certain group that has long been overlooked.