Building Living Machines with Biology, The Original Technology

Monica (4s): Hi, Jennifer. 

Jennifer (5s): Hi Monica. 

Monica (6s): How are you today? 

Jennifer (7s): I'm great. How are you doing? 

Monica (11s): I'm great. I see that you're in the tent, the beach tent right now for the weekend. 

Jennifer (15s): I'm back at the beach, tent spending some time with my parents. 

Monica (18s): I love it. All right. Tell us who we're talking to today. 

Jennifer (24s): We sat down a few weeks ago. Their dear friend, Jasmina Aganovic. Jasmina is an MIT educated entrepreneur and a beauty specialist whose work focuses on harnessing the power of biotechnology to develop personal care products. After getting her degree in chemical and biological engineering from MIT, Jasmina works with well known brands like Fresh and Living Proof before going on to found the skincare line Mother Dirt, which uses naturally occurring bacteria to cleanse and treat the skin without stripping the natural microbiome. Currently, Jasmina, is the entrepreneur in residence at Gingko Bioworks, a leading biotechnology company that uses self programming to increase the use of biological innovation in industries like beauty pharmacology, and even food.

Monica (1m 4s): It's really so fascinating and Gingko has been harnessing the power of biology with naturally occurring phenomena in their work. And it's very timely as well. They kind of call themselves an organism company, which I love. And as we learned from her, Gingko recently partnered with Moderna to ramp up their vaccine production, which of course is so vitally important right now. 

Jennifer (1m 27s): Absolutely. We spoke to Jasmeen about everything from vaccines to research and innovation in the beauty industry and why biology is the ultimate technology. 

Monica (1m 35s): I love that. I think that should be our title. So she's super cool and really takes these tough scientific concepts and makes them totally digestible and easy to understand. So let's get to it with our interview with Jasmina. 

Jennifer (1m 52s): Good morning, Jasmina. How are you? 

Jasmina (1m 55s): Oh, I'm so good. Good morning. How are you doing? 

Jennifer (1m 59s): We are so happy to have you on our Biophilic Solutions podcast. As you know, we love you. We miss you and Monica and I are such big fans of you and your work for so long. So thank you for being here.

Monica (2m 10s): I know, it's so great to see your face. 

Jasmina (2m 14s): This has been such a long time coming, so I'm really excited. I'm sure that our conversation is just going to fly by because that's how all of our time always has worked together. 

Monica (2m 25s): I know, definitely. 

Jennifer (2m 27s): I'm sorry. I know there’s just so much we want to talk about. So I’m just going to dive in because Monica and I know you so well, we know about your work but can you let our audience know that more about your work in biotechnology and skincare and how you started in the industry and just take us from there? 

Jasmina (2m 46s): Yeah, definitely. So I got my degree in Chemical and Biological Engineering from, from MIT and I went right into the beauty industry. So it was an industry I was really passionate, a direct application of my background. I was really passionate about innovation in the space and delivering on great science in the beauty industry. And so that was really the premise with which I, I entered the industry and effectively what my career has turned into is figuring out how to articulate innovation through brands and products, which is this like big puzzle that I really love and really enjoy. 

And it's been a huge learning experience. I mean, I think especially even in this time now, when we think about science and innovation, it can be so intimidating to people and sounds scary sometimes. And particularly in the world of beauty, it's such an emotional, evocative, and creative space. So I think that that further necessitates a need to bring things to life and in a, in a very different type of way. But a couple of my, my recent experiences, I've been at early stage companies oftentimes launching them and bringing them to life. 

One of them was a brand called Mother Dirt, which was all about probiotics for the skin. So we were one of the first to take a live probiotic and bring it to consumers, which, you know, when we started in 2014, it was like a radical concept. You know, we've been told to take bacteria off our skin and here we are putting it back on. And that got me very interested in this concept of biology, right? Like working with microbes, what is the tool set that we can use to really enhance the performance of our products and maybe even solve some of the sustainability issues that we're dealing with. 

And so that is ultimately what led me to my current role as an entrepreneur in residence at Gingko, where I'm working with Ginkgo as this powerful biotechnology company to think about literally how we use biology as technology. And that's been effectively the last two years of my, of my career and still looking to do something in beauty and personal care. Well, and it's interesting because last time we were together, you said something to me about sort of the history of, you know, sort of innovation has really been around, I think you said around physics and chemistry, but really it's about biology as this sort of original technology that creates living machines. And I'm maybe not, I'm betraying you a little bit, but something about that really struck me as that, the future of really thinking about how, how biology and how important it is to think about nature and the DNA and all these sort of like instead of these bits and these ones and zeros, we have this, these other tools to sort of recombine. 

So yeah, I mean, I, that, that helped me a lot because I think, you know, with all your work at Mother Dirt, which was sort of how we met you originally is so cool, but the concept was sort of hard to grasp. Right. And I think we talked about microbiome and probiotic and you kind of, people had been comfortable with gut bacteria, but maybe not skin bacteria in a positive way. So I feel like communications is hard with a new concept. 

Jennifer (6m 24s): Now look at the industry now, since when you created, now everyone's talking about the skin's microbiome, so yeah. 

Jasmina (6m 30s): Yeah. Well, Monica and I were laughing and I still haven't done this Monica and I trust that the audience will find this highly entertaining and hold me accountable to eventually write it, but Lady Gaga is coming out with a line and she teased it on Instagram. And in the thing, it was like all about the skin microbiome. And I was like, oh my God, I never would have envisioned that like Lady Gaga would be talking about the skin microbiome, like five years later. So I was saying, I should write a blog post that was like the skin microbiome from nada to Gaga.

Monica (7m 4s): Yes, and I am still encouraging you to do that. And you guys had phenomenal, you know, coverage and press when it all sort of, you know, kind of got kicked off with Mother Dirt, including an incredible like New York times article where the, I think the writer, you know, kind of did a test to sort of quote, if this is, you know, cultivate bacteria on her skin for 30 days in a research project with sort of the Mother Dirt MIT scientists. How did you get involved with that? Was that just coming out of your time at MIT or, I mean, it's so cool. You don't think of MIT bringing out sort of a personal care line and how did that come to be? 

Jasmina (7m 47s): Yeah, well actually when I was graduating and I wanted to get into the industry, it was really hard because beauty companies don't recruit at MIT. And even on the technical side, I was really surprised with the technical talent that exists at MIT, that there was not even really like a funnel into technical roles at these beauty companies. 

So I sort of needed to figure it out myself. So the, the team that was working with this bacteria, they were largely studying it for pharmaceutical applications. And they were in the process of doing a beta test. And I happened to meet someone who knew that team. And I was telling them about my work at Living Proof, where we had taken this technology from a lab I had worked in at MIT and we had turned it into this line of haircare products that eventually ended up getting represented by Jennifer Aniston. 

And they're now part of the Unilever portfolio, but they were like, oh my gosh, our friends are doing this really cool thing with bacteria. Like you should talk to them because I think that they want to do something to help consumers understand how important microbes are. And so that was ultimately how I got connected to them. And the thesis as we started discussing was, Hey, can we use products to start a conversation with people? And so, and I think what I've learned through, through like many of these experiences, and I think the reason I'm so passionate about consumer products is because it's one thing to have a conversation or to read words on paper. 

It can of course be moving and be thought provoking, but it is an entirely different experience to have a product that you use that can fundamentally change your mind. In the case of bacteria, what we heard over and over again from many of our users were these like intense struggles with their skin, of course, this like fear and weirdness and ick factor of bacteria, but then they would take the product, they would use it and it would transform their skin and then their mind has changed. Right. Then they see the world in a very different way. And that is, that is a big shift for a person to, to go through. 

So that was how I was connected to them. And that was the origins of why we wanted to launch this brand. And it was really around triggering this conversation. 

Jennifer (10m 8s): I think it's so important because that's how I met you, is through our Walk with Walsh interview, you really talked to us about the impact of not only just having a product, but then starting that conversation. You really helped me see things differently. Cause I've been in beauty for so long, but it really made me think about what I was using on my own skin and how much I was stripping away and how much important it is to, or how important is to put ourselves back in the soil and in the dirt and how much we have stripped that away for so long. So can you kind of discuss a bit more about how being a part of Gingko Bioworks now has also leveled up your previous work into what you're doing next? I'm really curious. 

Jasmina (10m 47s): Yeah, definitely. So I'm actually going to start off with something that Monica said a moment ago, which was about like nature as technology, right? Like we view technology as like coming in one packet, it's this like space gray laptop that's in front of me, it's my iPhone. And it's like cold and metallic. And like, that's how we're used to looking at technology. It's, you know, a Tesla with all of its slick features. That's really how we view technology. But if we were to just be very objective around what that quote unquote modern technology is able to do and then compare it to what nature is able to do, nature's able to place things with atom level precision, and that is something modern technology can not do. 

And nature is able to grow things at a global scale, right? If we think about forests, the Amazon, and that is again, something that modern technology is not able to do. And there's so much that nature does every single day that we still do not understand. And the technology that we have built over the course of the last several centuries is not able to replicate or understand yet. And so fundamentally I think that there's going to be this shift of reframing, how we look at nature as primitive lens and more of a lens of sophistication and truly looking at it as, as technology. 

So then going back to something else that Monica said and where it was like, oh, well, most of our innovations have been around yes, manufacturing and chemistry, right? And, and these have been transformative. Synthetic chemistry has been transformative, right for, for human health and manufacturing and building and growing and plastics. And you know, all sorts of other ramifications have come with that, but it's really transformed how human beings live their lives, but it's all predicated on yanking things out of the ground, right? It's about yanking petrochemicals out of the ground, yanking plants out of the ground and even taking things from, from animals, right. 

That live on the ground. Right. And, but those were the tools that we had, right? It's about extracting putting it through by temperature, pressure, heat chemicals, to like end up with the ingredients we want for the materials that we want for use across all of these industries. Well what's amazing about nature and biology, and the whole reason biotechnology is sort of this field of intense high opportunity is because we can stop that cycle. 

And we can effectively say, what if we grew these things with precision, with purity? What if we use the same thing that makes sourdough rise and our beer brew, and we direct it to grow these things that we want so we don't have to extract from our environment anymore. And, and that is something that nature is uniquely capable of, right. Biology can do things chemistry can’t, it can self-replicate, it can repair. And those are the types of features and elements that we want to be able to harness through through biotechnology. 

So now bringing it to, to your question, Jennifer, around like, okay, how does, how does the experience at Mother Dirt start to like change or level up once you integrate this mindset? Well, if we think about changing first, how we source our ingredients, that's like a powerful concept, right? So to no longer have to like extract, like we have been from the environment, but two, what if we can fundamentally change how our products perform and what they do so that we're harnessing that biology that exists on our skin, through our skin microbiome, we're working with our biology and we're harnessing some of these unique features that biology has that you can't replicate with chemistry. 

So effectively what we're looking at is how we can create a new tool set for this industry to start to build different types of products and start to unlock new, hopefully new functionalities and stories.

Monica (14m 53s): Well and Gingko isn't like a consumer personal care brand company. They're really the innovation engine, if you will. And you're, I think still the entrepreneur in residence is that still the title that you have? And so tell us a little bit about Ginkgo, because I think what's interesting for the audience is there is amazing work that you guys have done with some of the vaccines recently, which I think is really interesting just to sort of touch on and talk about. Two, what you're talking about you know, you know, these sort of potential by biological products that could be used in personal care that you and I talked about when you were last here that, you know, maybe were, you know, the little more interesting from a consumer side, but you know, we are the recipient of that vaccine. So can you, I guess, tell us a little bit about high level Gingko, cause you got a lot of things going on there and then tell us, you know, cause I'd love to talk about the vaccine a little bit and then I'd love to talk about personal care. So yeah. 

Jasmina (16m 01s): Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So, so Gingko is a platform company means that they do not aspire to be the expert in any industry, right? They don't want to be the expert in agriculture. They don't want to be the expert in food. They don't want to be the expert in pharma. What they do want to be an expert at is biotechnology. So their mission is making biology easier to engineer. So what does that mean? The, the example that I give that is probably the most relatable to everyone is around insulin. 

So let's talk about insulin was sourced once upon a time for diabetics, it was sourced from actual pigs and there were lots of problems with this, not only ethical issues, but also purity issues. When you're extracting something from an animal, there are things that you cannot remove that could elicit a reaction in, in the, the ultimate patient or person. And so Genentech is a company that ended up pioneering the development of insulin through fermentation. 

So they used a microbe, but they took basically the DNA sequence of what encodes insulin. And they created a microbe that is able to ferment insulin with purity and consistency. And this was transformative for the treatment of, of diabetes. So massive change in the quality of life and also in the creation of this as, as a product, this was several decades ago and this is of course only a pharma product, highly expensive, highly risk intensive, but that was the early stage of biotechnology being able to do things like this. 

So since then, these tools have matured and progressed to the point where costs are starting to come down and speed is starting to pick up. So if you think about you might've heard about the human genome project, it was about sequencing the entire human genome and it was done and like it was complete in I think like the late around like the 2010 era, the cost over a billion dollars to do it was so expensive because the cost to read DNA was really expensive. 

And on top of that, if you wanted to print DNA, that was really expensive too. So all of this was cost prohibitive, but in the last 10 years, the cost to sequence DNA has come down massively. So today, if you want it to sequence the entire human genome, not only would it not take many years to do, it would cost a thousand dollars. And so that as an advancement, right, those massive orders of magnitude start to open up entirely new possibilities around how we can use this technology, how we can use DNA sequencing, how we can use DNA printing, how we can use fermentation, how we can use all of these things, opens up entirely new possibilities beyond just the world of pharma. 

And so this sets the stage for Ginkgo, basically Gingko is thinking of, okay, how do we put all of these things together in the most powerful way possible? And so what Gingko has created is what is right now, basically at 200,000 square foot set of foundries, and they've put everything under one roof. And so they've pieced together all the machines and robots, basically that sequence DNA, that right DNA, that stitch DNA together, that grow the organisms, that ferment them, that measure what those organisms are doing and all in high throughput. 

So if you were to see our foundries, you would say, wow, like there aren't that many people in there kind of the point, because all of these things are being automated. So even in that example of insulin, it was manual, it was a person or a group of people, pipetting things to go through this whole process, this, you know, designing the DNA, putting it in a yeast, fermenting the yeast, measuring what it produced and then changing things and just iterating over and over again. But Gingko is effectively setting up their platform to do everything in high throughput so that you can do thousands of iterations or hundreds of thousands of iterations with a really large speed. 

And so this is this platform that we talked about, right? They, they just want to be experts in all of these pieces that will be required for these industries, but they don't want to be experts in industries like individually. So I can talk about like the vaccines and the work that Gingko did with Moderna in a moment, but like, hopefully all of that makes sense. And I can go into detail 

Monica (20m 50s): You've done a great job, like laying it out. Cause I think it is a very, or at least it can be a very complicated idea. So no, you've done a great job. Thank you. 

Jasmina (21m 04s): Okay. Yeah. So that's like Gingko as a platform. So if we think about standing up entire industries on a new supply chain, right. So a great example of this is food, right? So what if we're able to reduce our reliance on animal husbandry, right. Which contributes to carbon emissions and also has ethical issues. What if we're able to start fermenting animal proteins and not just those proteins, but also the taste elements that come from that that are uniquely found in animals. 

What if we're able to do that? Well, food companies don't know much about biology, right? So here quickly, you can start to see why Gingko is focused on building out their platform because they want to be able to do the biotechnology work, to enable industries to make these shifts rather than requiring that a food company, right like Kraft needing to like set up fermentors and DNA sequencers. It doesn't, it doesn't make sense because the field is also so young, it's constantly evolving. 

And so it becomes highly resource intensive. Not only in terms of the people you need to hire, but the equipment, which is really expensive. And then you need to keep updating it because it's, it's improving so, so rapidly. And so separating, you know, the industry and letting the industry, you know, the food industry or the agriculture industry, be the experts in what they're doing and just have Ginkgo, like offer biotech as an option is really how they've chosen to separate it out. Would you then, or would, would Gingko then be providing the inputs to that company? 

Just like, you know, Kraft my, buy, you know, the macaroni from, I mean, I don't really know how their macaroni cheese gets made, but I'm just assuming, like they're not making all of the ingredients, they're sourcing the ingredients, they're bringing them together, they're packaging them and then they're selling them. So does, does Gingko become the input of like a, you know, like an actual, you know, you’re my cheese vendor, if you will, you know, so like, cause, cause again, I, as the consumer, whether that's a personal care, like again, I'm not sourcing even in beauty, right Jennifer? Like I'm not sourcing, I'm not making the lavender or even the synthetic lavender. I'm sourcing it from somewhere. Am I, am I hearing that right? 

Jasmina (25m 22s): No, no, no, no. You're, you're totally right. So let's like, like blow that out a little bit more. So here's like another really interesting learning for, for Gingko. Right? Gingko isn't even making the ingredient right. So like, let's say it's like an animal protein. The, what, like Gingko has learned over the last, you know, in the early phases of the work that they did is like food companies would come to them and they'd be like, oh, or whatever company like, oh, we want that's of stuff. 

Like we just want to like buy the ingredient in like kilos or metric tons or whatever. And Ginkgo's like, oh, we don't do that, but we'll give you a cell that makes that protein. And then the company is sort of like, what do I do? 

But like, isn't that amazing field. And like sourcing this as an ingredient, you get like a tube with something that can like grow it if you, for ferment it. And so this actually is a, is a great question because it points to how Gingko intersects with the industry. And so Gingko is effectively trying to enable the supply chain of various industries. So in the case of personal care, so that's kind of, if I were to launch a company built on top of the ginkgo platform, I would be the one that would be responsible for, you know, taking that cell, fermenting it, making a bunch of stuff and then understanding how to formulate with it, how to do the application development work so that when I sell it to someone, let's say Estee Lauder, the people at Estee Lauder know exactly how to work with it, to make sure that it performed in the way that it's supposed to. So it's just that like in between step. 

Monica (27m 10s): So you guys might be incubating those sort of middle people, if you will, or middle companies, if you will. Because, cause I think that, I think that's great the way you said it is that you're a platform. And I think that's good for me to keep thinking about, and then somebody else is going to have to sort of figure out how to formulate it, but then Estee Lauder or Kraft is going to purchase from the formulator, if you will, which in a weird way is kind of like you guys are providing the seed and then there's a farmer and then there's somebody

Jennifer (27m 43s): It’s like an R and D team, correct? 

Jasmina (27m 45s): Yes. Yes. Love it. Yeah. So all good questions. 

Monica (27m 47s): Yeah. It's just fascinating. Cause it's, it's so outside of my wheelhouse, but it's super interesting and I love the idea of MIT, you know, birthing these things. Ed is the entrepreneur in residence. So then what's your role? 

Jasmina (28s 05s): Ah, okay. So beauty has a long history with biotechnology actually. And it isn't like really talked about, I think, because it's like not particularly sexy in the way that it's been used, but I think the timing is really important right now to kind of bring it to the forefront and start to use biology as, as a catalyst for a shift in the industry. 

So what are some examples? Hyaluronic acid is from biotech, right? It actually used to come from roosters. You know, that like red thing on roosters, which at Serenbe I know my rooster over there at the barn. 

Monica (28m 45s): We did not, we did not extract anything from him. 

Jasmina (38m 51s): That is where hyaluronic acid used to come from. And actually in the 80s, when the animal rights movement started to pick up speed and PETA was formed and all of that, the industry was like, Ooh, we need to find an alternate source. This is a really important ingredient. And so they turned to biotech and they used a yeast to be able to make this hyaluronic acid. And the thing that I will point out that you cannot do with roosters is make many different types of hyaluronic acid. So what has happened with hyaluronic acid over the last 20, 30 years is that not only do we have a non-animal sourced one, but scientists have been able to study different molecular weights for different properties. And that is why hyaluronic acid is so ubiquitous because you can use a certain molecular weight for moisturization there are different weights used for things like injectables and fillers, and so it's really created a whole new world of opportunity that wasn't really accessible when we were sourcing it from, from animals. But that's a great classic example, but there's also other less sexy ingredients like lactic acid, some proteins and peptides that are used that come from biotech, but they've largely been used as replacements. There's also squalane. So there's a brand called bio-science and they're part of a biotech company called Amaris. And so they also use east to ferment squalane, which used to come from sharks. 

So these are all sort of prominent examples. And so as, so I'd known the team, I can go for a long time and they had always had interest in moving into personal care and effectively this idea of coming on board, getting to know Ginkgo, their Foundry, their team, how they work and incubating an idea from there, with my lens of what's going on in the industry, where could the big opportunities exist? That was effectively how that emerged. So I've been doing that for a year and a half going on two years now and effectively what we are planning to do is launch a, a company that will be an independent standalone company. 

And we will be using Gingko for their incredible platform, but we will be doing application development and performance validation work around bringing a biology first based ingredients into the market. 

Monica (31m 27s): And will you, do you think out of that will come a consumer-facing line or again, do you see yourself as more of creating those formulations that can be sold? 

Jasmina (31m 37s): Maybe we're having a lot of discussions around this now and the way that we're framing it is around, how can we have the most impact and how can we best capture the hearts and minds of consumers to catalyze this shift as quickly as possible? 

So it may be one, maybe the other, it might be a mix of the two, I guess you're just going to have to wait and see. 

Monica (32m 03s): I know, I’m very excited. 

Jennifer (32m 04s): I love all this Jasmina because you know, it's, especially now since COVID, I think it's really sped everything up that people really want to understand biology. And like you said, like things aren't as sexy or, but I think now people are really wanting to understand biology as, as technology and that nature as technology and how do we then harness, but also protect the land and you were, you're doing such a good job of that, I think, because, do you think because of COVID things have really sped up as well? 

Jasmina (32m 32s): I do. Yeah. I think, you know, it was, it was hard trying to finance this like new business. Right. We were pitching it to investors and then the world shut down and I thought, oh gosh, like what timing? But actually what I noticed as we were having conversations with potential investors was that there was this new sense of urgency that was like a total wake up call saying, Hey, we cannot take incremental steps anymore. 

We need to take really aggressive moves and take big bets. And so I definitely think that it has, and you know, even at Gingko, we talked about how we never thought we would see protein structures on the news every single night. But, and so I think, yeah, people had a newfound appreciation or interest around the power of biology. I mean, just look at what it has done in the negative case. Right. So it just goes to show how powerful it is and if we create the tools, imagine the good that, that we can do. So. Absolutely. I definitely think that, that it did.

Monica (33m 48s): And you guys got some good coverage, I want to say, was it 60 Minutes? This spring? Yeah. It was really cool. And that was just to circle back to the vaccine. Cause I think it's is very topical. Will you share a little bit how the platform supported that. I think it was Madonna, right? 

Jasmina (34m 05s): Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So there were a few things that Ginkgo did and things that they continue to do. So Ginkgo is continuing to do K through 12 screenings with schools. They have a series of partnerships with schools all over the United States because not all children are eligible to be vaccinated, but it's important that we still get kids back to school. So we need to come up with alternative methods. So Gingko is doing basically pooled screening at various stages of the pandemic. They were also doing sequencing for basically COVID testing. And so they had built out a large scale facility to be able to do that. And they were able to do that just in a matter of months. Wow. But just speaking to the scale of Gingko, this is exactly where our relationship with Moderna plugged in, Moderna is a pharma company. 

They're a vaccine company. They're not a biotech company in the sense that like they are fermenting things. They're just focused on vaccine development and like that is their lane. And because we needed to move really quickly with vaccines, we needed to think about manufacturing the raw materials that went into this vaccine. So the way you make an mRNA vaccine, you need to like create a DNA plasmid as part of that. And Moderna had like one fermentor that they would like use manually, right? 

I'm just like using sample numbers. But like you think about what Gingko had, Ginkgo had like hundreds of those and they were run and they're fully automated. So basically you go from a standpoint of like, okay, this company is just focused on vaccine development. Why would they invest a ton of effort into like fermentation optimization? So you go from a manual singular model to like hundreds and things that are fully automated. And so Ginkgo was able to work together with them to rapidly scale up how they would be able to manufacture this. 

And so the, I think the ultimate outcome was that the output of Moderna's manufacturing was like 5X what it was getting. So that meant that they were able to do one manufacturing run that produced five times as much material, which is basically you can imagine the increase in speed and being able to, to do that. So that's something that, yeah, Gingko is really proud of. 

Monica (36m 22s): As they should be, I mean, and that's the crazy thing that I think we became all too familiar with, is it, wasn't just like, you know, we have a vaccine and now we just need to get it out. It was like, oh, ha ha. There are a bunch of raw materials from the glass vials to all of the inputs that go into it that need to be created. And even if we had all of those, a lot of times we didn't have the factories and then obviously people was another factor, right. And we're still seeing that supply chain and people workforce issues. So I think that that's sort of fascinating and something that, again, I personally had no concerns with or had any thought of. 

And, but now, you know, we have houses that are, you know, we're show house that's coming in, that couldn't get windows because the aluminum wasn't there. And then I have another place that we can't get our beds in to start booking people into a new, a new retreat space because there's no foam, there's a foam shortage, let alone, there's nobody that’ll like pallet and pack and all these things. So I think it's really interesting that we just, oh, there's the answer? And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. It's a much more complicated thing. So it's super exciting that you guys were able to do that. 

Jasmina (37m 39s): Yeah. Yeah. Truly like incredible, incredible as an opportunity. Yeah. So, so yeah, something that Gingko’s really proud of and just really grateful to have had the opportunity to be able to, to do that work.

Monica (37m 51s): Does the, because, so one of the things I'm sort of hearing here and I had never really thought about it in, you know, finding non extractive and more ethical solutions for product ingredients, if you will, like, that's one of the things I'm sort of taking away from this and as somebody who likes to think of myself as being thoughtful in those things, you know, we try harder and harder like Jennifer says, to look at the ingredients, but half the time we don't know what they are and half the time we don't even know if they're, are they chemical based? Are they synthetic? Are they like, I don't even know sometimes what's good or bad. Can you talk a little bit about sort of like where you see the consumer conversation going, you know, that brands can talk about, you know, cause some synthetics are great, right. And I really am sort of fascinated by the, the less extractive nature, which is something that, you know, Jennifer and I talk about with biophilia all the time. 

Like it's a love of nature. How do we work with nature, not against it. And how do we work with it to not extract it, not, not being extractive relationship, but a like, you know, kind of almost a, an awe based one, which you sort of touched on in the beginning of like, we need to kind of get, get in there and be recognize the, the incredible technology that's there, but how, how do we think about it from a, you know, looking at everything that we're using? Like what, is there something we should be looking for? 

How do we know that that's not coming from a rooster or does it just, you know, that's not allowed anymore, which is great because of the recognition of the ethical things. But is there anywhere that we can go to find answers that you recommend? Or what should we look at? 

Jasmina (39s 39s): Yeah. There's no hard, yeah. There's no black or white guides. And actually, if anyone does try to make things seem really black or white, I would, I would just like pause for a moment and, and question it. I don't know. It's really complicated because people think like right now, I think the, the hard shift for consumers to make, and I think that it's kind of around the corner is like, we went from saying, oh, well we want everything to be plant-based because it's like pure and it's cleaner. And our earth literally cannot sustain Procter and Gamble moving to everything plant-based like just one company, we cannot physically grow enough stuff to fuel that. 

And so consumers think because it's, plant-based that it's, it's like better for the environment and that it's better for them. And that is simply not true. Our environment cannot sustain a plant-based supply chain. And also that has led to a series of challenges, right? So it led to the palm oil crisis. So a lot of deforestation of Southeast Asia, and it's also led to these like really weird things happening in the supply chain. 

Like it used to be that you, as a raw material company, you would go to a farm, you would harvest whatever the plants are. And then you would like take them back to your facility for processing and like making the ultimate ingredient. But as the demand started to grow, you couldn't figure it all out just from one farm. Like there wasn't enough from one farm, so then you needed to go to another farm. But that other farm could be in a different geographic location. They could be using different types of pesticides and like stuff in their soil. And so the actual like ingredient or product might end up being of different quality because of that, the way that the industry like tries to solve for it is like they just mix it all together. 

And then the problem is when you go to register in different global areas, like the EU is becoming much more concerned about like, Hey, where are things coming from? Do you actually know where it came from? And sometimes you're not able to get that, that those answers from your raw material suppliers, and then that's a problem. Right. And I think consumers just generally want to know where things have, have come from. And right now with like how the supply chain has been structured together, that will be difficult.

On the flip side, I think it's also just like interesting to question, like, why do we think that nature got it right. In all cases, like why do we have this like sometimes blind faith and trust in nature. And like, we see that with the vaccines where people are like, oh, my immune system will be able to handle it. But we also see that in other cases where there could be a protein that like works, like hyaluronic acid is like a great example of it. I'm going to go back. Like nature created a certain hyaluronic acid that was in rooster combs, but probably wouldn't have been able to do many of the things that hyaluronic acid does today because it was just one form in nature, same thing with insulin, right. 

There's a reason that like the insulin that actually came from animals, wasn't the safest way to be able to do things for consumers. And so I think it's less about viewing things in a binary fashion and really just about applying critical thinking and an open mind around recognizing things are not perfect now, we need to look to do things differently. Let's engage with those ideas and make sure we're asking all the right questions so that we don't have weird unintended consequences down the line. 

Jennifer (43m 13s): I’m so glad you brought that up because there is such a move for this clean, you know, clean beauty. And there's just no real justification in terms of like the why, because people just put this lens on it, this rose colored lens of what they think it should be, but I like the fact that you said there needs to be more conversation and real strategic thinking and critical thinking around why, why we're viewing it that way and why we need to kind of put our head space into something different to think about why we need to look at our ingredients different. How do we harvest that differently?

Monica (43m 42s): Well and, and I just decided just to jump in there and totally echo it because of course we want to put quote, clean products on our skin because we've recognized that, you know, our skin is the largest organ of our body into when we put something on it. If it's a chemical that's going to have, you know, negative consequences, you know, there's all sorts of things that we've learned that can happen, you know, beyond just a surface, right? Like it goes inside you, right. Why are we so careful when we have babies and all the stuff we're feeding them and putting, you know, like we just sort of stop thinking about that at some point, but I was just reading the other day, you know, following something. 

I can't remember what beauty industry thing that there's something called the bio preferred program out of the USDA, the department of agriculture. And, you know, again, it it's like this certification to increase like purchase and use of bio-based products. And I haven't dug into it too much, but I'm always fascinated, you know, because as somebody looking for, and probably any consumer looking for that, a little bit of the black and white, or like, oh my God, it's so overwhelming. 

Would somebody please just like point me in the right direction. So having a quote seal of approval, whether that's organic or a generative. And I don't know if you've heard about that. And I don't know if that, you know, might have its own unintended consequences. Like you're saying, if it's the USDA, the ag departments wanting to people to use more plant-based products. I wonder, I just don't. I started, I'm always questioning like where these things come from and if you've heard of them and then would some of your stuff be included in that bio preferred? Even though you’re making it in a lab. 

Jasmina (45m 32s): Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. That's, that's interesting. I hadn't heard of them. And yeah, there is always this question of like, you know, is what's created in the lab nature identical and what can we expect? And I think, I think when I like peel back all the layers, I think it comes down to like really two really simple things. People want to know that what they're using is safe and they want to know that it's going to perform. And I think that if we can demonstrate trust around those two things, I think whether it comes from a lab or whether it comes from nature matters less, right? 

Like, I, I, I have this belief that this push towards clean beauty and like plant based sourcing comes from mistrust of how things are right now. And it's so confusing. And I think that consumers have been very discouraged with what they've seen from big companies in particular. And so clean has been like the easiest way for people to feel like they have, for consumers to feel like they have some semblance of control and it's not perfect. 

And there's a lot of confusion around it, but like, until we solve that trust issue and I don't have any like great solutions around it, I don't know that people are just going to accept like, oh, just do lab based or like, just do plant-based like, I, I think those statements don't are not really constructive in, in that discussion because we have to like rebuild trust with consumers. I feel in some important way. Well, and, and one of the things that I know and I, and I, and I think you're still publishing it, but you sent us, I think Jennifer as well, a beautiful sort of like magazine that Gingko did, which I, you know, again, as somebody who loves like content and branding and I loved it and I thought it was really like meaty, the, the, the articles were really meaty and this is more of like a, it, you know, it was just talking about all the technology that you guys are doing, but it was also gorgeous. 

It had amazing illustrations. Where did that come from? And, you know, cause I think you print originally, you print one a year and then you do digital monthly. I think it's sort of, it's almost like it's your newsletter, but then it comes in this gorgeous package once a year. I love that, you know what, isn't a consumer facing brand did it. And it's beautiful again, you know, we're so used to, oh, these labs are a bunch of techies and they don't understand, you know, like they don't get branding, they don't get, you know, so I love that you did it. 

And has that been a successful tool for you guys and are you still using it? And we'll, we'll put a picture of it on the, on the, in the show notes. 

Jasmina (48m 19s): Yeah. Something that we're super proud of. So the magazine is called Grow and the URL is growbygingko.com. And that was actually very much an idea from the creative director of Ginkgo. 

Her name is Christina Aghapackis, a wonderful, brilliant, amazing human. And then one of our other colleagues, Grace Chung, who really was like the, the ringleader around each each issue. And so, you know, why did they decide to start doing that? Well, very interesting, right. People think about science happening in a void. And I think that a lot of scientists are like, oh no, I'm just here to do the science. I'm not responsible for, you know, what happens out in the world and like how it's talked about, I'm just here to do good science and well, we've seen how problematic that is, right? 

Scientists to take responsibility for how things show up in the world. And, and also there's this false narrative that supports that, that is like out there that like, oh, science is not political and science isn't about philosophy. And science is cause like scientists try and simplify things to these like, like factual evidence-based things. And, and, and that simply is not true. And so that is what this magazine is specifically leaning into. 

It is specifically leaning into the gray, the gooey, the unknown complexity of where science and politics intersect and the positive and the negative around it, ethics and philosophy. And like, sci-fi, it's not meant to be about like the science specifically. It's meant to be about all of the other things that aren't discussed enough. And so they'll do cool things in here like mash-ups like an interview. So they did an interview between me and this incredible artist who, named Ani Lou, I mean, her work is incredible. She uses biology to make art. She's done incredible things like, oh my God, this is like the first one that popped into my mind. And it's like, kind of not safe for work, but basically she wants, she created this, I think it was called laboratory of longings. And she was curious how plants would grow based off of like pheromones and like other biological components that are like really powerful for humans. And so she had people have sex and sweat and then the sweat watered the plants. 

Monica (51m 7s): Oh my god, I love it. Wild.  

Jasmina (51m 10s): You know, ask questions around, like when she had a child, she thought that the bond that she formed with the child was like so fascinating. And then she tried to simplify it down to the science of like what's happening from a chemistry standpoint in your brain. And she was like, can we harness that to feel that level of bond with other things? And so it's just such an interesting way of seeing the world. And so we did a, we did an interview together, this, the theme of that issue was about beauty. And so there was a lot of looking at nature around birds and beauty associated with birds and how that was tied into evolution and how that like took a weird turn into eugenics and how that was like messed up. And so it's just a very unexpected, I think all of the pieces, extremely important, I think to Gingko and their, their culture around making sure that people are, that we're not making, you know, mistake that I think like the tech industry made. 

Right. Which was that like, oh, we're just a platform. We don't, we don't, we're not responsible for how it's used. And we’ve like seen how that's played out. Ginkgo specifically wants people to feel like they are invited in and that they are welcomed to it. And that we're thinking about all of these fringe points and edge points.

Jennifer (52m 34s): You make science beautiful. You know, it's like, it's a combination of it doesn't have to be cold and something separate then, but science can be beautiful and can be interwoven into all of our lives. So how do we think about it differently? And when Monica was just talking about the book or the magazine, it is so beautiful. And like you just said before a second ago is feeling, so beauty and nature is all about feeling and you're really kind of connecting those dots so wonderfully for people to kind of be educated without feeling like they're being overeducated. Like they're not being thrown like words and things that they can't kind of accept or understand or learn more about. It's not this like high level. It's more of like a weaving of the stories of the why, which makes it really beautiful and approachable, I think.

Monica (53m 14s): Well, and I think you're a great example of that. Jasmaina, you know, you're a woman, right, who, you know, went to MIT, right. Chemical, right and biological engineer, you know, whether you want to be, or not, you become a phenomenal role model for not only more women, but people in, you know, the beauty industry or personal care industry who may want to get into this world to be inspired to go the route that you've gone. 

Right. That there's other ways to get into the industry versus, oh, I'm going to go work at, you know, straight out at L'Oreal to be a product manager. There's these really sort of really interesting science-based ways to get into the industry. 

Jasmina (54m 03s): That’s so nice Monica, I appreciate that. That's nice. I, you know, I do want to just share like an interesting observation for me in the two years that I've been at almost two years, that I've been at Gingko. You know, I realized I was, I was carrying like this immense amount of like almost shame and guilt, right? 

Like beauty is perceived as this like superficial frivolous industry and actually being at Ginkgo and just seeing how excited and curious, and everyone was that I was working with to like, learn about the industry and to see how like biology could be used in it made me even like view almost the value of my work in a, in a really different way. And it also made me realize other things like I, as I like peel back the layers of the onion I was thinking about, so feminist rant coming…

I, I was like, oh, well, I don't know, like people view innovation as like really sexy. And so many of these other industries, like, look at what Elon Musk did with the car and like Steve Jobs with like software and hardware and the like, I dunno, why am I having these conversations with a bunch of investors who are like, innovation doesn't matter in beauty it's like just basically like marketing and packaging. And I just remember thinking, like, I don't think, I just don't think that that's true. So I actually started looking up what percentage of operational budget is spent on R and D across a bunch of consumer product industries, and guess which industry consistently spends the least. 

And so I was like, why is that right? Why is there more innovation happening in food than there is in this, in this industry, right? It's a $600 billion industry. So you can't even say that it's small. In fact, evidently smaller industries are actually spending more. If you take a young company, even like Peloton, they are spending more of their operational budget on R and D than like, and, and, and so it's like strange to me, like, why do we create this level of acceptance around these different categories that tend to have user bases that are more reflective of people in leadership positions, but in beauty, I think the biggest disconnect exists where I, I would venture to say like the actual demographic that is the consumer of this industry is the most different from the demographic that's in leadership positions. 

And I wonder if that's creating this, you know, this, this disconnect. And I just thought that that was really like thought provoking and also indicative of, of how maybe far off the mark we are in terms of how we're viewing this industry even. Absolutely. Honestly, I think you're totally right. And, you know, I could go into a whole of, you know, where a certain demographic is in the leadership position. And so yeah. What things get taken care of, but those needs of that specific demographic, right. 

Versus these other issues that sort of get pushed off as lesser or feminine or surface. And so I think it's important to bring that sort of female point of view to bear. And again, yeah. I mean, as a, as a woman, you know, many times I've gotten the pat on the head and like, isn't she sweet and oh, how, how do you, how are you doing all these things? 

And so that's just, you know, unfortunately the society that we sort of live in that is changing over time. But I think the work that you're doing, the work that Gingko is doing again from you being the entrepreneur in residence, to even just grow the, you know, the magazine, like those are indicators of beauty's important and female perspectives important and softness, and some of those surface things. And I do think that goes into nature because right mother nature has been this feminine thing that we have extracted from. 

And, you know, now I'll go into my own little one, like females, women have been the ones who have been, you know, a large demographic that has been, you know, oppressed and extracted from. And, you know, other people have said, this is what you should be doing with your body and, you know, all these things. Right. So I think that we are seeing a shift and I think with, you know, the understanding of nature and the awe and beauty of what it can do, but, you know, good and bad, right. 

Obviously we're seeing a lot of challenges with climate and nature, but having that awe and having that respect for it, I'm hoping, is part of what we're trying to do here. And I know what you're doing as well, because I think I'm fascinated by the idea of like, fermentation, even though that's happening in a lab, like, we don't think of a beer as this like weird chemical thing that's not natural. So what is the difference between that and when you're fermenting, whatever insulin. So I think it's education is a huge part of it. Right. And exposure. Right? Yeah. So we can, we can discuss more offline. So the audience still wants to listen to us.

So what's next, can you, you know what, what's next? You're going to launch this new consumer facing product or brand, you know, we'll see sort of, if it's, if I purchase it or if I'm going to get purchase something with your ingredients in it, I think you've been doing some fundraising. Is there anything we should be looking out for? You'll continue to be the entrepreneur in residence at Gingko. What should we be doing? I mean, besides, you know, going to the website and learning more and maybe ordering the magazine. 

Jasmina (1h 00m 01s): Well, for anyone who's interested in learning more about Gingko, definitely go to Gingko's website so ginkgobioworks.com and then check out, grow Gingko as well. It's, it's really, it's really beautiful, but yeah, Monica and Jennifer, you all should just keep doing what you're doing because that is so important and fulfilling too. And yeah, on my end, it's really just about moving into actually this new company and starting to untangle from Ginkgo. So hopefully in a few months, you know, we can talk a little bit more about what exactly we're doing, but just, we have a few more ducks that we need to get in, in a row before we start sharing. 

Monica (1h 00m 46s): Well, and we're either going to have to come find you in Boston or meet you at work or have a reunion at Serenbe any of those.

Jennifer (1h 00m 52s): All three of those things.

Monica (1h 00m 54s): It’s always a joy to see you, but we love seeing you in person too.

Jennifer (1h 00m 57s): Thank you for your gift of your grace and your beauty and your intelligence to really talk to things that might sounds kind of hard to understand, you really break it down for people, and it's such a beautiful way, and your work is so impactful for so many. So we thank you for your time. 

Jasmina (1h 01m 28s): Aw Jennifer likewise, I still remember that like magical weekend that we all had together at Serenbe. It was actually right as I was getting ready to transition into my role at, at Gingko. So it's just really like the full circle here is really touching. So I feel so lucky to know both of you. 

Monica (1h 01m 29s): Well, now we're in each other's orbits, there’s no getting rid of all three of us. 

Jasmina (1h 01m 33s): Exactly. I would have it no other way. 

Monica (1h 01m 35s): Thank you so much for your time. 

Jennifer (1h 01m 40s): So there's so much information jam packed into that interview. Where should we even start? What do you think was a key takeaway for you? 

Monica (1h 01m 47s): Well for me, I would say it's really the shift and how we view technology and what technology is. So typically when we think about tech or at least when I do, it conjures up images of iPhones and complicated computer coding, or maybe even a Tesla, very sleek and sterile, but really biology and nature is the ultimate technology. And I think that's a fascinating way to look at it. So we have a nature first innovation space, she's doing it in so many fields are really Gingko is, and it would massively benefit so many of us 

Jennifer (1h 2m 20s): It’s so incredible when you think about it. And I think it's so important to have someone like Jasmina who was so well-versed in both beauty and biotechnology and who can really be a force for bringing these two worlds together. As someone who's been in the beauty industry for a long time, a lot of what she spoke to really resonated with me personally, it's a $600 billion industry. So it's usually important that it's part of this conversation. And there is so much misinformation about plant-based clean and green products that consumers really have no way of knowing. 

Monica (1h 2m 48s): Yep. And she mentioned just because something comes from nature doesn't mean it's good for the planet because so much of what we do is really extractive. And so how do we rethink how we use materials? And biotech is an incredible industry that can help us harness the benefits of nature while greatly reducing our impact and harm in a more extractive way, or I should say less extractive way. 

Jennifer (1h 3m 14s): Right, like she mentioned with insulin coming from roosters, like that's great, but it's not the optimal way of extracting insulin for so many reasons in terms of efficacy and ethics and as the same way with beauty products. 

Monica (1h 3m 25s): And her last point about research and development really lacking in the beauty industry as well. And I'm not sure if you could tell, really struck a chord with me. I wonder how much of what we do with the way we as a society value a very traditionally feminine industry like beauty has to do with that lack of technology and research. 

Jennifer (1h 3m 43s): So spot on, well, that's why we need more people like Jasmina in leadership. 

Monica (1h 3m 47s): I know. And I can't wait to see what she does next.  

Jennifer (1h 3m 50s): I know me neither. So I guess we need just, just stay tuned. 

Monica (1h 3m 53s): Yep. Stay tuned. And thanks for listening.