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  "documentTitle": "Ginkgo Bioworks (DNA)",
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  "presentationDate": "2021-10-06 00:00:00",
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      "text": "An ex-Ginkgo executive stated that half of their projects fail at the front end and the other half at fermentation/scale-up, given Ginkgo’s inability achieve any cost metrics: “over-promised and under-delivered”; stated Zymergen “imploded” for a similar inability to manufacture their film.",
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      "text": "Engineering east and other standard hosts involves two phases: 1) the front-end where strains are identified via trial and error, where previous pages indicate that Ginkgo offers nothing unique; and 2) the fermentation and scale-up phase, where strains of interest are grown in quantities that are industrially relevant, versus the microscopic quantities at the front-end. Scaling and cost remain an ongoing, unsolved challenge for the “synthetic biology” industry. Many have coaxed microbes to excrete biofuels, but 1/100th of a teaspoon doesn’t power a car, not is it feasible if it costs $100,000 to fill up a tank with precious microbial juice. An ex-Ginkgo executive stated that half of their projects fail at the front end and the other half at fermentation/scale-up, given Ginkgo’s inability achieve any cost metrics: “over-promised and under-delivered”; stated Zymergen “imploded” for a similar inability to manufacture their film.",
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      "text": "Other at back-end fermentation and scale-up; Ginkgo can achieve any cost of goods metrics; “over-promised and under-delivered”; same reason Zymergen “imploded” – couldn’t manufacture their film. Half of them probably fail on the backend...",
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      "kind": "quote",
      "text": "Half of Ginkgo’s project fail at front-end strain engineering. The conversion rate that I spoke of, like how many projects actually succeed, I think a lot of that has to do with, I’d say half of them fail on the very front-end...",
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      "text": "“The conversion rate that I spoke of, like how many projects actually succeed, I think a lot of that has to do with, I’d say half of them fail on the very front-end, where it’s just very hard to make that product, it’s a very complex molecule, it’s difficult. Biology is hard, and there’s a lot of crosstalk, and you might be able to make a trace amount of something, but you can’t make grams per liter of it the way you could from a barrel of oil or something like that.” — Former Ginkgo executive; “Half of them probably fail on the backend where you’re trying to meet a certain cost of goods. Ginkgo historically has done very little work in pharma, and so, a lot of the extracts from plants and naturally-occurring vitamins and things like that, there are naturally-occurring alternatives, and so you really need to provide a low-cost, uniform, high-quality product. They can’t really achieve those metrics. It’s sort of over-promised and under-delivered in the backend. That’s something like Zymergen just went through that and kind of imploded in part because they couldn’t figure out how to scale up their proprietary film.” — Former Ginkgo executive",
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      "text": "Source: Scorpion Capital consultation calls with experts",
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