Andrey Pyankov

Boolean logic gates are engineered to operate in single cells using transcriptional regulators, RNARNA molecules or site-specific recombinases for the purpose of programing cells to respond to chemical or physical signals. Scaling up complexity poses some problems since a high number of parts can affect cellular viability due to metabolic burden. Some logic gates are too complex to be implemented by single cells. Logic can be simplified by using Distributed Multicellular Computation (DMC) where computational labor is divided between different cell strains. As in nature, where division of labor between subpopulations of cells allows cellular communities to accomplish complex tasks, logic programs can be engineered so that they are distributed between different cells. Dividing circuits into smaller subcircuits reduces the metabolic burden. Another advantage is the modular nature in which previously optimized regulatory components can be reused in different cell subpopulations.

Co-founder Bhargav Sosale is a software engineer and product designer who graduated from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and whose father, mother and sister are diabetes doctors. Co-founder Florian Savoy is an expert in computer vision with research experience at University of Illinois and a degree from École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. IndiaIndia is planned to be the company’s first market and the diagnosis will cost $1. Medios is partnered with retinal camera companies including Remidio and Intuvision.

On October 19th, 2016, Ginkgo Bioworks announced a partnership with Prospect BioProspect Bio to create a new biosensor to improve the speed and lower the cost of organism prototyping for new strain development. The biosensor under development will make the process of organism screening (testing for a desired trait) faster. Organism screening is one of the slowest processes of the design, build, test system Ginkgo Bioworks uses for organism development. Normally, each organism created by Ginkgo Bioworks has to be screened individually. A biosensor allows for the screening of many organisms at one time. Ginkgo Bioworks is hoping for a forty-fold decrease in the cost of screening and increase the speed of creating commercial ready organisms.

On September 8, 2005 Amicus Therapeutics completed their series C funding round with $55 million in funding from Quaker BioVentures (lead investor), Radius Ventures, Prospect Venture PartnersProspect Venture Partners, Palo Alto Investors, New Enterprise Associates, Garden State Life Sciences Venture, Frazier Healthcare Partners, Canaan Partners, and CHL Medical Partners.