Summary:
» Persephone Biosciences is a biotech startup that — with the help of $15 million and a lot of poop — is building a library of the human microbiome and assembling a best-of list of helpful life forms that could do everything from easing digestion to fighting serious disease.»
«The democratization of once exclusive and expensive tools like rapid genetic sequencing has nurtured a new generation of biotech companies and therapeutic approaches. In this case it’s taking a closer look at how everyone’s microbiome — the often unique set of microorganisms that live in and on our body and perform various tasks for mutual benefit — differs and what those differences mean for our health.»
«Co-founder Stephanie Culler came from a background of genetic work at Genomatica, where they were working on producing chemicals normally sourced from petroleum by modifying bacteria to make it via fermentation.»
«“It required 5 years of genetic engineering, but it worked — it allowed us to build a blueprint of how to engineer a bacteria,” she said. “Now we’re doing something similar using the same tools. But we used to map a single microbe, and now we’re doing it with multiple microbes, building a precision map of the whole gut biome.”»
Article written by Devin Coldewey.
19|07|2022
Source:
Tech Crunch