B4G EP 161 Raw

Paul Shapiro: [00:00:00] Welcome friend to episode 161 of the business for good podcast. You know often on this show we are talking about the use of biotechnology and food and in agriculture two passions of mine But there are so many ways that biotech can make our lives better including even in the air we breathe We spend about 90 percent of our lives indoors, yet the air inside our homes and offices is often far more polluted than the air outside.

Volatile organic compounds, or better known as VOCs, are constantly emitted by furniture, cleaning products, and even the very walls around us. Formaldehyde, benzene, toluene, these chemicals sound like they're something more out of an industrial park, but they're actually found inside the places where we eat.

Sleep and work. What if nature could give us a hand here? What if plants or even microbes could be supercharged to clean our air at a level that truly makes a difference? That's exactly the mission of today's guest Patrick Torby CEO and co founder of neo plants His company is using synthetic [00:01:00] biology to enhance houseplants and their soil microbes with built in air purification superpowers.

Right now, they're offering microbial powders called Power Drops to mix with water and sprinkle into the soil of your own houseplants to supercharge their air purifying capacity. Yes, I already ordered mine and I'm using them now. They also offer Neo PX, which is their all in one plant and microbe duo, including a marble queen, Pothos.

The bottom line is that Neoplants claims. That their technology can make plants up to 30 times more effective at cleaning the air in our homes and offices than the plants that we currently have today. Their systems don't just filter out air pollution, but actually metabolize it into harmless compounds.

In this episode. Patrick and I have a wide ranging conversation about topics like synthetic biology, science fiction, nature versus nurture, and of course, how his company's technology will both make money and make the world a better place. Already, the company has raised more than 20 million in venture capital with more still yet to come.

So if you've ever [00:02:00] wondered how science, business, and sustainability can come together to solve a problem hiding in plain sight, or in this case, plain smell, you won't want to miss this conversation.

Paul Shapiro: Patrick, welcome to the business for good podcast.

Patrick Torbey: Thank you, Paul.

Paul Shapiro: Hey, it's really great to be with you. Let me just get right down to it. What's the problem, right? What's the matter with the air in the room that I'm breathing right now?

Patrick Torbey: Well, the problem is invisible. The problem is called VOCs and particulate matter.

These two compounds, types of compounds, make the area of breathing indoors up to five times more polluted than the ones you can breathe outside on the streets. So PMs, particulate matter, are like fine dust particles that you breathe and that comes from outdoors from a lot of things. These are particularly bad for your health, but relatively easy to treat well, to treat, to prevent.

I guess you heard about HEPA filters. These are filters that can be in your HVAC system or in your air purifiers that can filter out this particular matter in quite an [00:03:00] efficient way. So this is a good way to reduce this level of Particulate matter. The other part of the problem is VOCs or volatile organic compounds.

And this is what we focus on specifically. These are chemical compounds like benzene, toluene or xylene formaldehyde that are emitted by a lot of things that we have indoors coming from actually inside your house. The paint you have on the wall, the furniture that you buy, the household products you use on an everyday basis, emits these VOCs constantly.

And chronic exposure to these compounds leads to a range of issues from headache or feeling like you need some fresh air, we call it sick building syndrome, all the way to cancer and actually millions of premature death every year due to these types of pollutants. So this is what we're breathing every day.

So congratulations

Paul Shapiro: Okay so you raised an interesting question about HEPA filters, right so I want to [00:04:00] get into that in a moment but first I've heard that plants help to purify Our air right like if you have house plants your indoor air is cleaner than if you don't have house plants So why do we need better plants?

Like what's the problem with current plants that we have like this one? I have this spider plant that's hanging up behind me right now Like what's the matter with it that I need something better than that?

Patrick Torbey: Well plants you often hear online that plants have purified the air It's true, and it's not.

It's true that plants have air purification capacities, meaning that they can absorb a bit of those pollutants, specifically these VOCs. But the problem here is the scale. They don't do it at an efficient enough pace to have any actual impact on the air quality you breathe every day. They do it In a way that's too slow because you can, you have to imagine these chemical compounds on are constantly being released by everything you have indoors and lead to a certain [00:05:00] concentration of pollutants.

That's just in the ambient air. If you can't absorb some of it, the concentration will still stay. stay the same because the emission coming from the walls, for example, will still be there. So you need something that absorbs the pollutants in a way that's fast enough to decrease this like ambient level of concentration.

So it's just about speed. You would need something like. At least a couple of dozen plants inside each room to have any significant impact in the area actually breeding

Paul Shapiro: Interesting. Okay. So the the plants that we normally have are basically not efficient enough And before we talk about how you're making even more efficient plants you mentioned patrick hepa filters.

So Why not just use a HEPA filter? Like I, I looked online, I can get a nice room air filter for like 150. Why shouldn't I just do that?

Patrick Torbey: I think you should. I think it's a good solution for one half of the problem, like particulate matter. So HEPA filters are, imagine like [00:06:00] nets with very, very, very fine netting, if you want.

That really catches everything that's beyond a certain diameter. So you often hear about particular PM 2. 5 PM 10. These are the size in micrometers of the particles. So these HEPA filters are really good against these types of pollutants. When you talk about, for example, formaldehyde, this is just a couple of atom big.

Benzene is just like a dozen of atoms. It's very, very small, much smaller. So they. completely go through these HEPA filters. They're not made to treat these types of pollutants, which make them extremely tricky to target.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. All right. Well, you've persuaded me that maybe I should get a HEPA filter.

Now persuade me that I need neoplants. So I want to know like, what are you doing? that actually makes the plant more efficient. Your claim is, and tell me if I'm getting this right, that neo plants are 30 times more [00:07:00] efficient than a conventional that you would have at purifying the air. So how are you doing that?

What are you doing to make a plant that's 30 times more efficient at air purification?

Patrick Torbey: Yeah. So what we do is Well, biotechnology, specifically synthetic biology or engineering plants and their microbiome to try to absorb these pollutants at a much faster rate. So we are working on both the plants genetically and the bacteria that live outside and inside of it that forms its microbiome.

So currently what we have on the market is the first product that she came up with, which is. A consortium of bacteria that we've specifically picked and evolved over the past five years to absorb these VOCs as a carbon source, meaning that they can eat benzene, transform it into more organic matter, basically use them as if it, as if it was sugar for example.

So destroying [00:08:00] them, limiting them from, from the atmosphere that you're breathing.

Paul Shapiro: And just for folks who aren't as initiated in biotechnology as you are, Patrick, so, you know, normally are, you know, a carbon source for a lot of microbes, not all, but a lot of them is going to be some type of sugar, right?

They're going to like to eat sugar, convert that sugar into something else. Maybe their biomass or they excrete something. You're saying that you have bioengineered microbes that instead of wanting sugar, they are happy to dine on benzene. Is that right?

Patrick Torbey: Yeah. So the microbes that's inside our product is there's two types of microbes. One of them that's specifically engineered to absorb benzene, toluene, and xylene at a maximum speed.

The way we We did that is we took bacteria directly from polluted environment from oil spills, et cetera, sampled a bunch of those and out of maybe 100 or so we tested the ones that could live on these nasty compounds as a sole carbon [00:09:00] source, meaning they don't need any other source of carbon to be able to grow and thrive.

So no sugar, nothing else.

Paul Shapiro: So these are, these are microbes that naturally evolved to consume benzene. That's so interesting.

Patrick Torbey: Exactly. But the issue was once you, if you use these microbes directly and pour them on the soil of the plant, et cetera they're still not efficient enough. They haven't evolved this capacity at at I would say high enough level to be able to be efficient in real size environments.

So what we did over the past five years is evolve them through techniques that basically are directing the evolution of these microorganisms. We call it lab assisted directed evolution, putting them through a series of challenges. And every time they. overcome the challenge, they become more powerful at absorbing these pollutants.

And after something like five years of this [00:10:00] intense training program for bacteria, they've become like 60 times more powerful than the original strain to de pollute the air. And so once we've evolved this strain, it was extremely powerful at absorbing benzene, toluene and xylene, which is the same family of molecules.

And then we use, you did the exact same thing with another bacteria, specially designed to address formaldehyde, put them together. And what you end up with is well, the way it looks like is a powder. It's in powder form. You mix it with, with water bacteria spring to life and you pour it on the soil of the plant.

And then these bacteria will form a plant microbiome, meaning they will inhabit the ecological niches provided by the plants around its roots, around its leaves, et cetera. And they live in symbiosis with the plants and by doing so absorbs the pollutants from the air in your home.

Paul Shapiro: So in this case, what you're offering is not an [00:11:00] enhanced plant.

It's enhanced microbes that you buy a powder from neoplants and then you pour it into the soil of your own plants, right? You don't have to actually buy the plant from you guys. So that's a different product. Now, the way that you described it, it sounded like you're not bioengineering these, right? Like this is kind of like a directed evolution, kind of like how you go from wolves to chihuahuas.

Is that accurate?

Patrick Torbey: There's a few ways we do things. So the first product is only done through a directed evolution and only with bacteria. And but over the last five years at Neoplants, what we've done is created an engineering technology stack that enables us to solve a problem. With being a bit technology agnostics, we find the best way to solve the issue.

The fastest way is what I said, which is directed evolution. What we're doing right now in our lab and we'll be. out there in by the end of the year is an upgraded version of these bacteria that have genetic editing inside of them. [00:12:00] Things like removing. A pump that pumps out these these chemical compounds out of the cell as a defense mechanism.

We don't want that to happen. So we knock this out. For example, there's other features that we can engineer and pinpoint that were already done in the lab, but need to go through proper testing and regulation before we can put it on the markets. But actually most of the work that's being done in our lab, it's not on the bacteria itself.

It's actually on the plants. So what we've done is once you can find these organisms, You can find the genetic basis of this function of how do they actually degrade these pollutants and you find the right, the genes responsible for that and you adapt them to the genome of the plant itself and you genetically engineer the plant to be able to do the same job as the bacteria.

And this is what we've been working on. I would say 80 percent of our efforts over the past many years is engineering the plant itself. Although it [00:13:00] takes much more time because With synthetic biology, the way it works is very much iterative. We don't have really good simulations. We can't really predict in a good way the effect of the changes we introduce and how effective they will be.

So you need to do trial and error. And when you do trial and error with bacteria, it's easy. It's within a week, it grows, you can test it. For a full plant, it's a bit different. You can test it on the plant cells, and you can do that quite quickly. So you know the gene is working. But if you want to know if the entire plant is working efficiently enough to de pollute the air, you need to wait for it to grow.

And from the moment where you transform the plants to the moment it's fully grown, it's about a year or so. So the iteration cycles are much slower. That being said we think that the plants that we have currently in our lab will be ready by next year to be on the markets.

Paul Shapiro: That's cool. So just to be clear, right now from neo plants, you can purchase the bacteria.

[00:14:00] Can you purchase any plants from you guys right now or those are not available for sale?

Patrick Torbey: You can buy a plant with a specific planter, but these are non-genetically engineered. These are just normal plants, but we've specifically chosen this plant because it. It's a very robust plant and it provides a lot of area for the bacteria to thrive in.

So it's kind of the best ecological niche for the bacteria, but it's a normal plant. And

Paul Shapiro: it's Pothos, right?

Patrick Torbey: Yeah, exactly. It's exactly the plant you have behind you, actually.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I was just going to say, so I'm sitting next to Pothos, so I just want to be clear. I can go to my own garden store and buy Pothos and then buy your bacteria.

I don't have to buy the Pothos and have it shipped from you. Okay.

Exactly.

Paul Shapiro: Awesome. Okay, so this is pretty exciting. Like, I, I think that indoor air quality is a very serious issue that too many people don't think about. Are there any regulatory hurdles for you? I presume on the directed evolution there are not, but for when you start getting into gene editing and maybe even bioengineering, which are, you know, in [00:15:00] the United States, gene editing, Does not necessarily mean you're doing what's called GMO or genetically modifying them, but in Europe, it's different.

Obviously, like people have different, different bodies have different regulatory definitions for this, but what are the regulatory hurdles, if any, first for the microbes and then for the next generation of the actual plants?

Patrick Torbey: Sure. Yeah. Well, it depends on the geography. Here we're talking about the United States.

GMO is a legal term, not a scientific term. Everything in the world is genetically modified, whether by human hand or by nature. So it's much more about how you modify it. And the way the regulation in most countries done is a bit antiquated in the sense that it's about, it's not about what genes do you insert or delete.

It's more about. The fact that you're doing it, like the methods used to do it, which is, which doesn't make too much sense. So for example, all the food that we eat have been genetically engineered [00:16:00] by putting a ton of UV or chemical mutagenesis to change like millions of changes inside the genome. We have no idea which ones does what.

And, but at the end of the day, you have a really nice looking tomato and like, Oh, this is not genetically modified. It is, but just not targeted,

Paul Shapiro: which is not a good way. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Patrick. You're making a really important point that I think very few people think about, right? Because they think about quote unquote natural produce and genetically modified produce, right?

Where you're making a point I just want to underscore this the way that we breed produce Is anything but natural right you you talked about mutagenesis, which I think would be helpful to give an explanation of what that is Since I think a lot of people may not be familiar But the result is that we really have no idea what we're doing to the genome We only know what the outcome is But you do the same experiment hundreds or thousands of times and you get a piece of fruit that thinks Maybe it's higher sugar content or it's more flesh and less seed or something like that But we don't really know what we're doing.

So what is mutagenesis and why is what [00:17:00] you are doing more selective and more precise?

Patrick Torbey: Yeah, so, Everything we're going to talk about are specific techniques that modify the genome of organisms. Some of them were invented Hundreds of years ago sometimes and some of them are just recently like a few years ago invented a few years ago But let's talk about the first kind of genetic modification that we played around with as a species It's selective breeding.

So you Don't do any mutagenesis. You just breed the two organisms that look like having the trace that you want to enhance now If you want to accelerate the diversity of traits that's available to you to breed What you want to do is to increase the genetic diversity artificially So you want to mutate a bunch of genes inside a genome in a random way and then select the one?

that you like. So we invented techniques. We, as, as in humanity, like putting a lot of UV or putting chemical compounds that change the DNA in a [00:18:00] completely random way, anywhere in the genome. And we just look at the results. Oh, this cucumber is more ripe faster, or the shelf life of the tomato is longer now, but you have no idea what changes you've done.

And this is not considered GMO. And that's insane. So you have no idea what you're doing. It's on targeted. And this is, I would say 99 percent of the food that you eat is produced by this, by this technique of random mutagenesis. Now, the techniques that are a bit more advanced, much more targeted are, for example CRISPR Cas9 that I think some of your listeners might heard of, which is basically molecular scissors.

It's like the edit button. If you're editing a code or, or a text you can delete things with CRISPRs. You can do specific little changes. And then there's other types of techniques called transgenesis, where you insert genes that were not previously in the genome of the organisms. So [00:19:00] either you take out stuff or change a few stuff with CRISPR Cas9, or you add different stuff with transgenesis.

In both cases, it's targeted. And these are regulated in different ways.

Paul Shapiro: Right. And in the United States, gene editing is not considered GMO, whereas transgenesis is. So there was a famous tomato that could withstand cold because they had inserted a gene from a fish who can endure cold temperatures into there.

And so that would be considered GMO, whereas gene editing, knocking out a particular gene or making an edit, is not considered GMO in the United States. So there's a lot of regulations for these types of bioengineered foods. But when you're talking about a plant that isn't a food, do you have to do anything?

Is there any regulatory hurdle for you at all?

Patrick Torbey: Yes, definitely. And there should be. So let's talk about the, the product we have currently on the market. We call it power drops. So these two bacteria, even though they're not even [00:20:00] edited with CRISPR Cas9. These are living organisms. And so we had to work with USDA to prove that the genus of these bacteria.

So kind of the species, the higher species exists in all the states of the United States, where we want to commercialize them. So to not to change the just genetic diversity of the states, which is what we've done, which is not a small feat to prove that these types of bacteria exists in every state.

Paul Shapiro: What, what is the, what is the genus of the bacteria called Patrick?

Patrick Torbey: Yes, so the one that's able to absorb formaldehyde is called Methylobacterium extorchens, and the one that

Paul Shapiro: If it rolls or not, okay, and what's the other one?

Patrick Torbey: The other one is a bit easier. It's Pseudomonas putida for benzene, toluene, and xylene.

Paul Shapiro: And you had to demonstrate that these two genera, which is the plural of genus, that these two genera are, are, are already present in all 50 U. S. [00:21:00] states.

Yes,

Patrick Torbey: exactly.

Paul Shapiro: Did you have to prove it in territories like Guam and America and Samoa and Puerto Rico? Or was it all in the states?

Patrick Torbey: Just the 50 states.

Amazing.

Paul Shapiro: We don't care if we mess up the genetic diversity of Guam. It's okay. Interesting. Okay, so I mean, I presume there must be literature looking at the microbial diversity on each state already. You don't have to go out and find it in nature. You can look in the literature.

Patrick Torbey: Yes, we did, but the resources are not consolidated.

So it took us some time to actually find the metadata, extract it and be precise enough to level of certainty that USDA was, was comfortable with, which is the way we should do things. I think this regulation makes complete sense. And to be completely transparent, USDA is very helpful with explaining exactly what do they need, what are the criteria and helping you through the regulatory process.

Now this is for the first product that's currently on the market. The next one will have [00:22:00] genetic editing. So a few genes outs and maybe a few genes ends. So this will be transgenesis and that would be fully general in both cases, the regulatory process is still a bit, well, you still have to prove the bacteria are there, but then you have to pass specifically specific regulatory paths.

And when it comes to the plant itself, It's also a bit a bit different and a bit more strict. The regulation for GMO plants is regulated by USDA, not by by FDA if it's not a food or a jug. So since we're not selling a tomato or, or maize, it's not made for consumption. We're regulated by the USDA and the process there is.

very I would say data driven and scientifically sound, which I'm very happy about, which is to say, we're going to look at what are you inserting inside your plants? And then we're going to compare the plants that you've created with the original plants. And specifically, we're going to look at is your plant at a higher risk to be of [00:23:00] negative impact to the environment?

agriculture, human or animal health, or B, a plant's best rather reservoir, as they say. So being a reservoir of pests, if the answer is no to these questions, then the, you pass the regulation. There's no more questions as they say. And it's a process that takes around six months. So it's a relatively quickly compared to other process.

So it's, it changed actually two years ago to become much more lean and straightforward. And actually I would say much better. Because before that, it was about how do you insert the genes, not which genes are inside there. And where do the genes come from? Do they come from a bacteria, a virus an animal, a plant, which don't, doesn't make sense.

The universe, the codes, the genetic code is universal. So it's about what do they code for, not where do they come from? So I'm happy that the regulation in the U S is much more. Scientifically sounds than the one you can see, for example, where I'm sitting in in [00:24:00] Europe.

Paul Shapiro: Yes, you know, there are people in America, including myself, you know, often have constructive criticism for our government.

But when you look at this particular issue of novel, novel biotechnology approval, it's certainly better here than it is in Europe. That's for sure. You talked about how, you know, you're not, It's not producing crops, right, or food, but could this have any beneficial impact when, if you wanted to do that, like, could this technology be useful for farmers who are producing food in some way?

I don't know why they would care whether the air quality is better, but is there some benefit to them?

Patrick Torbey: Yeah, it's not just about air quality. So what we focus on at Neoplants is metabolism engineering. How do you change the metabolism of organisms, bacteria that live with plants, but also plants themselves.

Once you get to a level of understanding of how plants work, you can start leveraging how they work and try to nudge them in a certain direction. Once for, let me give you an example, something [00:25:00] that we're very interested, very interested in is increasing the yield of certain products that become viable economically if you increase that yield.

So let me give you an example. Let's talk first about the farmers that you, that you mentioned. Imagine if. Plants wouldn't need any nitrogen fertilizers to grow. What if they could absorb nitrogen directly from the air? That would be a technology that would change the world. And that's

Paul Shapiro: That's essentially what PivotBio is doing, right?

Patrick Torbey: PivotBio is doing something great, which is engineering microbes that can live symbiotically with the plants to, to absorb this nitrogen directly from the air.

Paul Shapiro: You're talking about creating, like, corn or wheat that could actually absorb it from the air themselves, like, do their own Bosch Haber process, like, right there without the microbial support.

Patrick Torbey: That would be a technology that would change the world. That would be a [00:26:00] technology that would decouple soil fertility from agricultural yield. That would decrease the cost structure of a corn farmer in the U. S. by 25%, doubling their profits. Basically feed the world. This is the big promise of plant synthetic biology plant metabolism engineering It's extremely difficult to do but I think we're on the path We as in humanity on the path to being able to understand nature Well enough to be to be able to leverage it at such an extent If you don't have to do the haber bosch process producing natural fertilizers, you remove five percent of greenhouse gas emissions so there's a bunch of different ways to To solve these these problems, I think pivot buyer, what they're doing with bacteria is fantastic.

And I think that you can go even further and not need the bacteria anymore. The same way we're doing right now with the engineering, the plant itself, having the bacterial gene that absorb these VOCs and transform them. But let me give you an example that. That we're actually actively [00:27:00] working on that has to do with agriculture.

I was talking about making an industry much more viable economically by increasing the yield of a certain plant. So I'm going to talk about rubber production here for like two minutes. So for your listeners, rubber production is done 95 percent in Southeast Asia in tropical forests that you need to destroy to grow a certain tree called the Hevea tree.

is where the rubber comes from. 95 percent of natural rubber comes from there. Natural rubber is found everywhere and specifically in tires. It's heavy duty rubber. You need it. In medical devices, in any industry that, that you can think of. The problem is it's really unsustainable the way we cultivate rubber today.

We have to, we already destroyed a rainforest the size of Switzerland to produce that, that rubber. And it's, the demand is growing. But Hevea is not the only tree, the only plant that can produce rubber. There's another plant that grows actually in the desert, not in [00:28:00] tropical forest, called Wayule. It actually lives in northern Mexico, southern U.

S. It produces a rubber that might, it might be even higher quality than Hevea, but at a yield that's not high enough to be economically viable. What if you could genetically engineer this YLE plant to increase the yield of rubber to make it economically viable? You would change in a drastic way an entire industry, making it, well, cheaper for the consumer, but also much more sustainable because you would be greening the deserts of the U.

S. instead of deforesting the forests of Asia. And that's just through changing the metabolism of the CO2 that the plant absorbs and pushing it towards rubber production. Metabolism engineering of the soiled plants.

Paul Shapiro: That's really amazing, Patrick. I hope that comes to fruition. And I think that this is one of the things that folks who are sustainability advocates don't pay enough attention to, which is yield, right?

Like, you know, folks want to [00:29:00] go to quote unquote more natural techniques of agriculture, when in reality probably the best way to avoid deforestation is just to increase yield. Right so that you don't have to cut down as much forest to produce the same product And it reminds me. I I was reading about quinoa production because you know quinoa has this Health and environmental halo on it and I like quinoa too But I was looking up what the yields of quinoa versus rice are and quinoa typically yields at best three metric tons per hectare Whereas rice does at best 10, right?

So over three times over 300 more rice per hectare than quinoa, which means that if everybody switched from rice to quinoa, you would need to farm more than 300. I mean, there's probably not a way to do that since the environmental conditions for quinoa are very unique, but even if you could do it, you would need more than three times the amount of land and therefore more than three times the amount of deforestation to consume the same amount of quinoa as we do rice.

And I, like, [00:30:00] when I think about this, I'm like, gee, if somebody should be working. On enhancing the yields of quinoa, right? Like there's a lot more research That's going into rice production than quinoa production or recently. I was reading about are you familiar with kernza the perennial wheat? Do you know about that?

Patrick Torbey: No, I don't.

Paul Shapiro: So, you know wheat is grown as an annual, right? So you have to, you know, chop it down every year and then replant it. Whereas there's a new type of wheat that's been bred called Kernza, which is perennial. And so it gets these really deep roots and it's very good for soil health. It's really cool.

But it produces dramatically less than the annual wheat, right? So you need way more land to grow the same amount of wheat from Kernza than you do from regular. And so if you could enhance the yields of Kernza, it would be a really great advancement. But I hope that you get into crop yield enhancement because that would be a really amazing a really amazing outcome.

I I this has led me to wonder though also Patrick So, you know, I asked you if there's a agricultural application for your technology, which it sounds like obviously there is Is there any reason to [00:31:00] grow? Enhanced air purifying plants outside like is you know inside it's clear You're saying the air indoors is much dirtier than the air outdoors But is the air outdoors, especially in urban environments where there's a lot of air pollution, like, you know, I, I was recently in parts of Asia where the air was just Really, really bad.

And I wonder, like, how many would you need an unreasonable number of these plants that are enhanced to do that? Or would this be a type of thing where you could have trees in Chinese cities, right, where they're making the air better?

Patrick Torbey: So the problem of outdoor air pollution is a bit more I would say, multifactorial, a bit more complex to treat.

But keep in mind that the air you have indoors comes from outdoors. And on top of that, you add these VOCs coming from inside the house. So air quality is actually mostly a problem indoors than outdoors. And since we're spending 90 percent of our time [00:32:00] indoors. But let's take the example of China. I forgot which city specifically added many, many more park on the outskirts of the city.

And they saw a drastic decrease in air pollution by just having more parks, parks, planting more trees. So I suspect that this, the technology that we're using. can be applied to bushes or trees that are on alongside the roads or highways of of metropolitan areas that would have, I think, a significant, significant impact if it's right next to the exhaust areas, for example, where cars are exhausting their, their benzene.

But once it's really released outside in the atmosphere, it becomes a bit more complex because the concentration. Becomes less. And so it depends will become less and less powerful at absorbing them, the less concentrated they are. I would say for the air quality of the general city, the best solution would be to reduce emission as best as [00:33:00] possible.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. What about engineering trees that are just way more effective at sucking carbon dioxide? As a, as a climate mitigation strategy.

Patrick Torbey: So here we're talking not about air pollution, but about greenhouse gases. So it's two different types of, of gases, greenhouse gases. It's CO2 methane and nitrous oxide, N two OC O2.

So what synthetic biology can do is nudge nature in a certain way, but there's some things that don't need any nudging. One of these things is CO2 capture photosynthesis as plants do it. So plants have evolved this capacity to absorb CO2 in a super efficient way because their survival is dependent on it, their growth rate, the number of seeds, their health, their resistance to diseases, environmental changes, is completely linked to how fast can they absorb [00:34:00] CO2 and metabolize it.

So synthetic biology is By far not not close enough to be 1 percent of what nature can do. We don't understand 1 percent of nature, let alone being able to, to enhance it that way. So I would say with the current technologies, and these are things that we really looked at quite in depth at neoplants, you would be able to at maximum double the amount of CO2 absorbed by trees or by, by plants in general and doubling the rate of absorption.

Is not close. Not going to get us any closer to reaching our climate goals. What will get us closer is planting huge areas of a forest. And these are governmental projects. Not, not something a synthetic biology startup can do. That being said. There are startups that are working on genetic engineering trees to absorb more CO2 using the same exact types of technology that [00:35:00] we're using.

And and that can have a massive positive impact in the forestry industry, for example, absorbing more carbon, creating more woods, storing them a bit more. But if you want to have an impact at the gigatons scale, You will need a lot of trees.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, so we had Maddy Hall, the CEO of Living Carbon, on this show earlier, and if my memory is correct, I think that she said that their trees were like 30 percent more efficient.

It wasn't 300 percent more, it was like 30 percent more efficient. So, you know, that's good. Certainly good but but more is definitely needed We'll link to that episode in the show notes for this episode at businessforgoodpodcast. com for anybody who wants to check that out And we also did an episode with lisa safari and the president of pivot bio So if you want to go listen to what they're doing, too but for now patrick first, how can folks like myself?

Get your bacteria. I want to be able to put it on my plants. Where can I go to order my little bacterial packet from you? And do I need to is this a do I need to keep on reordering or is it a one time purchase? I hope for your sake I [00:36:00] need to keep reordering

Patrick Torbey: So you can go on neoplants. com And check out our, our product we call Power Drops and apply it to any one of your plants except for cacti.

It doesn't work extremely well on cacti just because of the physiology of the thing. But

Paul Shapiro: So that's the only place to get it is at neoplants. com. I can't get them on Amazon or anywhere else, right?

Patrick Torbey: We just got into this product into market a few weeks ago. So for now, it's just on theopants. com, but I hope you'll find it in many more places soon.

Now about the Subscription or not. So to keep the air purification performance of these bacteria at max level You need to re inoculate the plants around once a month We're working on longevity trying to make it last even longer, but we're already quite happy with with one month. So you can decide either doing it on a subscription based or buying them once in a while, you can buy them in bulk.

We have a pack of 48 if you want to just buy it once, or you can have them delivered to you every quarter, a specific number of [00:37:00] of packets.

Paul Shapiro: Very cool. Well, you you you're hearing it here first that I am going to be ordering these for sure in terms of the funding of the company, I I think that you guys have raised over 20 million u.

s dollars Is that right?

Patrick Torbey: Correct?

Paul Shapiro: And are are you I presume if you're just getting on the market now, right? You're not nearing a point of breakeven or profitability. So what's it going to take? How many more rounds do you think that you'll have to do before you get to a place of profitability?

Patrick Torbey: Oh, that's an interesting question.

It depends on the trajectory we want to, we want to get, right? So, we could stop our entire R and D projects and be profitable today. That's obviously not what you want to do. And we're currently fundraising to do well, three things. First thing is well, trying to get this new innovation to a maximum number of people in the U S.

expand to other geographies and reach a more R and D milestone on our climate roadmap. What I was talking about this metabolism engineering of plants to have a positive impact on climate change, not [00:38:00] just VOCs. We believe that with this round of funding, if we decide to continue to have an organic growth, it would be enough.

But if we want to be. ambitious. If we want to, and this is why we created Neoplants, is really to try to solve the biggest problems using plant synthetic biology. So we will require more rounds of funding if we want to go to the big planetary scale impact, which synthetic biology can do. The potential is there.

It's just about who, what are the talents and the resources you put in front of it? How serious are you to solve the issue? So I hope that we'll raise a few more rounds to give us the resources. To put us in the best position to solve these big problems. And, and there's many other startups like us that are going into the field of synthetic biology and solving many different issues just like we are.

So for me, it's not just about neoplants. It's about this wave of new synthetic biology startups like Maddy from Living Carbon. Like the guys at [00:39:00] Pivot Bio. These are fantastic people that are really trying to solve big problems. By having a positive impact economically and ecologically. So, I'm really bullish on this new science that's coming up.

Paul Shapiro: Very cool. Before we get to the end of our conversation here, Patrick, I just have to ask you a tangentially related question. So, I work with a PhD biologist, and he likes to debate the nature versus nurture issue. And I ask him, he has two kids, and when I ask him, how much of your kids personalities are shaped by the way that you have raised them, versus What was innate from their genetic destiny and he believes that it's 99 genetics.

What do you believe?

Patrick Torbey: So let's let's be scientific about this question the differences that you can find with this

Paul Shapiro: Let me say, do you have kids?

Patrick Torbey: No, I don't.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. Okay. So He [00:40:00] has two kids right and they're very different from one another despite having been raised in the same environment Now, of course, they're not identical right there.

They were you know, a couple years apart, etc. They have different things But they have pretty different. Personalities my own brother and I have very different personalities despite being raised in the same house by the same parents So is that? something environmental Or is it just the role of the genetic dice that no matter what my parents did, it would have been the same outcome.

Patrick Torbey: So if you take two twins that have the same genetic makeup, sometimes they have extremely different personalities. Sometimes they have a very similar personalities. Another thing that I like to think about is you. I'm sure you're familiar with the saying that anatomically modern humans are like 100, 000 years old or even more.

Some people say 300, 000 years old. That would mean that you can take a caveman baby. And raise it in the modern world and they would behave as normal as any other [00:41:00] kids that that's what it means to be in An atomically modern human maybe not 300 000 years ago But 50 000 years ago for sure and we had very very different personalities back then than what we are that what we have today That being said you cannot educate a fish or a monkey the same way you educate a human So I would say the answer is you need a genetic basis that allows you To add culture and education on top of it and to shape a human.

It really is a mix of both. But I think that we tend to underestimate the power of culture and education. Just comparing the culture of prehistoric humans with the ones in Silicon Valley, for example.

Paul Shapiro: Okay, very interesting. Yes. Well, yeah, it'd be interesting to compare those two groups specifically So i'm looking forward to my colleague listening to this.

I'm sure he will allege that i've misrepresented his opinion in some ways So I don't think I have but we'll see what he has to say and i'll report back to you finally patrick two quick questions for you. Obviously you are enmeshed in the world of startups Is there something [00:42:00] that you hope somebody else will do?

You're busy with neoplants. Is there some company you hope somebody else will start?

Patrick Torbey: Yes, and I hope they will start something that will shock me. I think the potential of specifically synthetic biology is beyond what I can imagine and I'm a huge fan of science fiction. It's like Asking somebody in the early fifties, what do they think computer science will look like in, in 50 years or even 20 years?

I, I can think about a few applications to work on. But what I'm looking forward to is things that I can't think about right now. Things that are going to be possible in five years, 10 years with the younger generations creating something new. But in general, I would advise people to find a really big problem.

Because synthetic biology and biotechnology is extremely hard and difficult to to actually [00:43:00] work with. This is not a technology that we developed. It's a technology that's been evolved. It's an alien technology that we first need to understand and then leverage. So for it, in order for it to be worth the effort, it needs to be a big enough problem.

So we need to address huge problems. So go big for it. And do something that nobody else has tried or something that people think is impossible too often are like we scientists are a bit too conservative and oh, we tried this 20 years ago. It didn't work. Yeah, it didn't work with 20 year old technologies, but maybe it can work now.

So more creativity, thinking outside the box, solving big problems. Yeah,

Paul Shapiro: I, I regularly marvel at the amazing ways that technology has changed our life, like the fact that we are speaking live by video, I can talk by video live to virtually anyone on the planet at any time I want. These are [00:44:00] things that the Greek gods did not have the ability to do right like our everyday experiences today.

Or have greater divine like powers than what the ancient Greeks and Romans attributed to their gods And we just forget about how different our lives are today And and we expect that they're going to be similar tomorrow and indeed they're going to be very different tomorrow and I too am a science fiction fan.

In fact, I just finished have you ever read a Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.

I did, yes.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah, so I've read other more, more popular Arthur C. Clarke books like Rendezvous with Rama, but Childhood's End was really good. I'll recommend it. I'll include a link for those who want to check it out, but it's a good story that I will not betray the plot for, but I, I definitely recommend it for anybody who's interested.

And aliens coming to earth to make life better here. Okay, finally what resources would you recommend if somebody's interested in either synthetic biology or entrepreneurship or whatever the case may be? What resources, Patrick, have been useful for you?

Patrick Torbey: I think if [00:45:00] you're talking about people that have a scientific background, I'm not going to recommend books about entrepreneurship.

I will recommend book about even if you don't have a scientific background, maybe even more so read science fiction because I deeply believe that. The technologies that we invent today were already thought of by science fiction authors 50 years ago. There's a virtuous cycle happening between science and science fiction where science fiction takes the science of today and thinks about push to the max.

What could it be in a fictionalized setting? This we're used to, but what people completely underestimate is the power of science fiction to inspire science and to direct the way science goes. The portable cell phone was invented because the guy was a fan of Star Trek and wanted to use the community. I forgot what their name was, the communicator.

So [00:46:00] they looked at Star Trek and invented the cell phone. What fascinated me is actually completely outside of even science fiction, it's Pokemon. I wondered, like, why, if I go into nature, can I find a giraffe? But not a Pikachu. What makes nature does things and not other dreaming in terms of fantasy or even more so science fiction gives you ideas about what could be possible in the future.

How could you change the world we live in today to look like the futuristic world that you would like to live in? Or so read more science fiction, but if you want to be inspired, listen to science, popular science Authors like Carl Sagan, Carl Sagan. So I grew up in Lebanon where we didn't have a lot of resources when it comes to entrepreneurship or science or anything.

But I had this DVD series called Cosmos, where this astrophysicist called Carl Sagan would talk about the beauty of the cosmos and our place [00:47:00] in it. And this is what draws me into science. And. then into synthetic biology, because I'm not good at math. And I think most biologists are scientists that are not good at math, but I, I like to work with nature.

And so get inspired. I would say, read something that inspires you to think differently and to shape the world you want to live in.

Paul Shapiro: Well, that's very poignant, Patrick. And I'll tell you, Carl Sagan and Cosmos had a huge impact on my life. I remember when I read and watched Cosmos when I was in high school and it just totally blew me away and ignited a lifelong passion for space and astronomy and astrobiology.

And I had an opportunity in 1996 to meet Carl Sagan. He was a speaker at an animal protection conference. And very sadly, Very, very sadly, I went there. I would have gone to the conference anyway, but I went there because I really wanted to see him as a keynote speaker, and he had cancer at the time, and so his wife spoke in his place, and she did a great job.

She [00:48:00] was a co author on many of his books with him, so it's not like she wasn't involved in his work, but sadly, I never got to meet him, but I am such a fan that at my own company, The Better Me Co., when you walk into the lobby, there is a massive life size portrait of Carl Sagan greeting you. Company, so that's one of the nice things about starting your own company.

You can decorate as you see fit so Cosmos will make leave that recommendation in the show notes for this episode at business for good podcast. com I am going to be going to neoplants. com and ordering myself some bacteria so I can have better air inside of my house patrick Thanks so much.

Patrick Torbey: Thank you paul