The premier horizontal platform for cell programming, Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings Inc. (NYSE: DNA) shares drops 2% in pre trading session on Monday as the firm releases that the tuck-in purchase of Altar, a French biotechnology startup that has built a patented adaptive evolution platform. A fleet of Altar’s automated adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE) equipment will be integrated into Ginkgo’s Foundry to serve clients in a variety of industries, including food and beverage, biofuels, biomaterials, cosmetics, animal health, and human health. Ginkgo has previously worked effectively with Altar on customer initiatives and is delighted to welcome them to the team.
Despite enormous progress in rational genome editing and high-throughput testing of engineered strains over the last decade, engineering microorganisms that meet target specifications under industrially relevant conditions remains difficult due to the complexity and unknowns of the underlying genetics. ALE can be a potent strategy to addressing this difficulty for the generation of specific phenotypes, such as those based on better growth under ordinarily adverse circumstances. Ginkgo expects to be able to routinely engineer those target phenotypes that can be selected for based on their improved growth properties under defined process conditions, such as the presence of otherwise inhibitory concentrations of a target end product or prohibitively high temperatures, by incorporating Altar’s ALE platform into its existing strain engineering capabilities.
Senior Director, Foundry Technology at Ginkgo Bioworks, Nikos Reppas stated that as the number of programs they work on grows, it is critical that they have the greatest tools for rational design as well as the capacity to utilize the natural variety and creativity that develops from evolutionary processes. They are delighted to welcome the Altar team to Ginkgo and look forward to incorporating Altar technology into Ginkgo’s range of solutions in order to better serve current and prospective clients.
CEO of Altar, Simon Trancart stated that they developed Altar to improve the feasibility and speed of bio-manufactured items to market. They have been working with Ginkgo for several years and are excited to join the Ginkgo platform as they try to achieve their purpose on a larger scale by collaboratively leveraging biology to drive innovation across sectors.
