12 Comments
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Saul's avatar

Terrific story. The only potential warning would be to avoid emulating a company such as Sangamo which possesses some very interesting bbb technology but has yet to commercialise a single drug (and is valued accordingly). At some point companies have to prioritise and bite the proverbial bullet.

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Elliot Hershberg's avatar

Agreed!

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Colin Brown's avatar

Absolutely love this. Sorry it took me so long to digest it. My backlog was a bit insane, but keep bringing the value, Elliot. This is top stuff.

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Elliot Hershberg's avatar

Thank you for reading!

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Smaug's avatar

I just ordered Regenesis, what other books on synthetic biology would you recommend someone who knows nothing here? Thank you so much.

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Elliot Hershberg's avatar

Not quite synthetic biology, but all of Siddhartha Mukherjee's books are great.

For a full guide, check this post out: https://www.asimov.press/p/synbio-guide

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V Allen's avatar

What am amazing story. Church's lab brings together brilliant, hardworking scientists and these founders of Manifold Bio make for an action packed science thriller! Fantastic essay, thank you for taking us on their journey of hard work and discovery with such excellent and clear writing.

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Elliot Hershberg's avatar

Thank you for reading!

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Tommy C's avatar

Loved this deep dive, and certainly think Manifold’s platform has the potential to be revolutionary. I’m curious, I didn’t see much mention of DNA encoded libraries; how do you see that technology fulfilling (or failing to) similar goals?

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Elliot Hershberg's avatar

Good question! DELs are an in vitro assay. A core design goal of Manifold is to be able to do a big pooled library (not quite order of magnitude of DELS), but with a much richer in vivo readout rather than just enrichment in a DEL.

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Steve Mudge's avatar

Wow, amazing science! Thanks for such a thorough write-up.

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Elliot Hershberg's avatar

Thanks for reading!

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