Biological standardization of functional modules

My exploration into genetic engineering for my M.Sc. thesis has led me to an interesting path of new exciting research in gene synthesis. For those of you that have not been in contact with this topic before, it can simply be described as the synthesis of gene-length DNA from chemically derived oligonucleotides, which in turn are short Feb 23 posting in McKinsey&Company: What matters: ”Over the past few decades, most new jobs, wealth, and growth were created in the knowledge and digital realm. And while venture capital represented only about 0.2 percent of US GDP, the companies it created generated about 17 percent of economic activity. The Internet changed virtually every industry. Yet as far-reaching as the digital revolution was, the ability to code life will likely reach even further.“.

BioBrick Standardization Process
DNA cannot currently be fabricated purely using an in vitro process (it still requires an intermediate step using a host organism, e.g. yeast or E.Coli). Nevertheless, a transition period has certainly begun. An interesting model in regards to this is the BioBrick Foundation that was introduced (according to Wikipedia) by Tom Knight (MIT), Drew Endy (Stanford) and Christopher Voigt (UCSF). The trademarked words BioBrick and BioBricks refer to a specific brand of open source genetic parts, defined via an open technical standards setting process;
1. You develop some scheme for standardizing some aspect of synthetic biology work.
2. You convince at least one other person, at a different location from you, that the scheme would help them with something that they care about.
3. You each demonstrate that the proposed standard works for each of you (i.e., the standard must work and be good for something).
4. You document your scheme in writing.
5. You request a BBF RFC number by asking for one (email the list)
6. The BBF technical standards group (i.e., the folks on this list) comment on the standard, try it out, propose revisions.
7. You revise the standard if necessary.
8. The standard is formally accepted as part of the definition for BioBrick parts. Congratulations, you win (publishers are standing by), the BioBricks technical standards suite is updated.
9. New, possible standards tremble before you! Goto 1.

Productification of Functional Modules
BioBrick parts are DNA sequences held in circular plasmids with precisely defined up- and downstream sequences (both of which are not considered part of the actual BioBrick part). Larger BioBrick parts are simple to create as the up- and downstream sequences contain six restriction sites for specific restriction enzymes allowing for ”chaining together“ of smaller ones. According to the Guardian, there are 3 levels of BioBrick parts;
1) Parts: encode basic biological functions
2) Devices: made from a collection of parts and encode some human-defined functions (such as logic gates in electronic circuits)
3) Systems: perform tasks (such as counting)

Openness
I have not been able to find any IPR policies or ownership governance, but according to an article in Nature Biotech it seems as the objective is to create openness and accessibility: ”Quantitative descriptions of devices in the form of standardized, comprehensive datasheets are widely used in the electrical10, mechanical, structural and other engineering disciplines. [...] We propose to adopt a similar framework for describing engineered biological devices. [...] Finally, because the receiver can be used in many systems and because we hope to promote the collaborative development and unfettered use of open libraries of standard biological parts and devices, all of the information describing the receiver is freely available through the Registry of Standard Biological Parts”

Value Extraction
It will be interesting to see what type of interesting value extraction models that may arise from this open standard. Some early models related to education include;
* The International Genetic Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition
* The Build-A-Genome (BAG) class at John Hopkins University

To paraphrase Barry Schuler in his TED talk Genomics 101, about the fact that it is a fine line between playing god and learning the laws of nature. We are not creating anything artificial we are only changing around the already existing building blocks in nature to understand what the rules of the game are.

Tobias Thornblad

More state-of-the-art gene synthesis:
http://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/abstract/S0167-7799(08)00285-0

Bundling intellectual elements into value proposition in Biotech

In this posting I aim to begin an analysis of the dynamic nature of intellectual offerings by exploring how business models are created in intellectualized business, in particular those stemming from bioscience. There are obviously a whole range of characteristics that differ intellectual objects from physical objects demanding completely different parameters for constructing business models, but I think that it is interesting to recognize that some elements remain the same in the eyes of the receiver of the value proposition (i.e. the customer/end-user or similar). The most basic, but also in my opinion most important, aspect that remains the same is the conception of scarcity. No one is willing to pay a premium price for something that is perceived to exist in abundance and is freely available. To illustrate: this is probably the notion that has changed among the general public in relation to music which a lot of people nowadays download from the internet for free while perceiving the action as a natural, and non-criminal, way of obtaining a non-scarce object (i.e. the mp3 file). Nonetheless, the value proposition of the concept ‘music’ still can be leveraged in a number of ways by packaging it in different business models and offerings such as concert tickets, Spotify (as explored by Johan in previous postings), ring tones, etc..

So what does this have to do with business models in Biotech? It is important to realize that all intellectual objects and offerings (incl. Biotech) are relying upon the intellectual conception that they exist in limited amounts, i.e. from an economical perspective - they exist in scarcity. This can be done in a number of ways including packaging them as exclusive offerings in terms of geographical scope, field of use and/or bundling them with physical artifacts (that do exist in scarcity). All of which having an enabling and more strengthening foundation in the fact that most of them are protectable by means of intellectual property rights.

An illustrating example of a immensely successful bundling of IP and material objects is the famous polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machine which by regulating thermocycles activates and deactivates the heat-stable DNA polymerase originally isolated from the bacterium Thermus aquaticus. The effect of this bundling of intellectual objects and physical objects results in a machine which may quickly replicate a stretch of DNA, but by zooming in and revealing the intellectual nature of the objects which are actually providing the functions (thermocyclers and mechanical parts aside) it is quite obvious that the assembling of DNA building blocks resulting in an exact copy of the template DNA is a spontaneous mechanism at certain temperatures. Capturing this process through intellectual property rights and offering the concept to other actors would probably had limited success as business model, whereas packaging the process in a physical object provides a valuable turnkey solution for actors interested in amplifying DNA.

Hence, it goes without saying that the value proposition has to be accepted and experienced by the receiver to be of any value. This obviously brings up a whole range of other questions, such as “how do you measure this value” as it would be an immense difference in value when offering a description in a patent of the above biological reaction to a biotech company in contrast to provide the same offering to an actor in the IT business. Well, my intention is to keep future blog posts somewhat shorter than my previous one, so this will probably be explored more in the future by me or someone of my fellow co-bloggers.

Tobias Thornblad