Welcome back to In the Byre! Today’s edition is an exciting story as old as life itself.

It is estimated that humans have discovered and cataloged somewhere on the order of magnitude of 10 million species of bacteria from nature(1). That is a shockingly low 0.00001% of the estimated 1 trillion species on Earth (1)!

MicroByre is at the forefront of discovering and understanding the unique ins-and-outs of Earth’s vast microbial biome. With our tools, we specialize in characterizing and editing bacteria that have previously not been utilized in industrial biotechnology.

So why use non-model bacteria?

Current methods of biomanufacturing usually require genetic engineers to insert genes into organisms that are not naturally occurring in them. This has been tried over and over again to disappointing results. It is such a common practice to edit the DNA of E. coli that it is done in many High School biology classrooms.

But what if instead of inserting foreign DNA into E. coli, we find and use a microbe that already produces the target molecule and we optimize for their growth? That is the mission of MicroByre - to find the species that already create novel products and supercharge them to make more of that compound or enzyme.

So which microbes should be domesticated?

MicroByre has spent years building an engineering platform that gives our team unparalleled insights into our microbes and helps us best identify organisms that are better suited for this job. We are strategically focused on the long-overlooked heroes of the microbial world. While there is much work ahead, we are excited to continue building our internal data tools and successfully bringing more microbes into our Byre. Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn Here!

1. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1521291113