Ep. 6 MicroByre: Sarah Richardson
Why poop is the new gold, domesticating bacteria, creating nylon from oat waste, turning pee into rocket fuel, the one thing NOT to do with someone you’re negotiating with *hint--it involves bacteria*
Fellow Climate Warriors,
This episode I drink an 🍊Orange Line with Sarah Richardson, Co-founder and CEO of MicroByre.
Join us as we discuss why poop is the new gold, domesticating bacteria, creating nylon from oat waste, turning pee into rocket fuel, the one thing NOT to do with someone you’re negotiating with *hint--it involves bacteria*, bioprospecting, why cats are serial killers, and so much more!
📻 Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Substack👉
Please see below about the newest podcast episode and the 🥃upcoming CTC Happy HourS on 9/30 in Berkeley! This are going to be epic. 📝RSVP coming soon! Thank you for your continued support, and keep up the good fight with a cool beverage in hand.
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📝 Show Notes Below👇
🎧 New podcast episode:
Sarah Richardson, Co-founder and CEO, MicroByre
“We need to make poop the new gold. We need to give new ways for poop to become the input, and for antibiotics to become the output...or for polymers or for bioplastics to become the output. That just means cozying up with bacteria, because they can do it.” -Sarah Richardson, Co-founder and CEO, MicroByre
Sarah is a computationally inclined microbiologist and science communicator: she speaks charmingly to computers, bacteria, and people. Sarah grew up in West Baltimore, and after completing a PhD in human genetics and molecular biology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a Postdoctoral fellowship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Sarah founded the biotech startup MicroByre (@MicroByre), where she leads a skilled and diverse team in the construction of genomic toolkits for non‐model prokaryotes. Trained to straddle disciplines, Sarah has a very unique perspective on the emerging technologies made possible by synthetic biology.
🍹 What we drank during the episode: 🍊Orange Line
Enjoy the show!
Listen to the episode onSpotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack.
Want to be on the show? Interested in sponsoring?
Please reach out to m@climatetechcocktails.com
🥃 September Bay Area Climate Tech Cocktails Happy HourS:
Thursday, September 30th, 5:30-7:30pm at Cell Valley Labs in Berkeley to celebrate the release of Ryan Bethencourt’s, Co-founder and CEO of Wild Earth, Climate Tech Cocktails Episode. The happy hours will include a guided tour of Cell Valley Labs and samples of foods from cool companies like Climax Foods. RSVP coming soon!
Companies/Startups mentioned during the show:
🐣 Feasible
🐣 Activate
People/places/things mentioned during the episode
🧠Cas9
🧠Ebay
🧠Starlings causing trouble in America
🧠Domestic cats and their impacts on biodiversity
-TIMESTAMPS-
[0:00] Intro
[1:20] Drink of the show
[3:22] Why poop is the new gold
[8:05] Crispr
[12:23] How MicroByre is domesticating bacteria
[17:53] Bioprospecting
[19:53] How we used to make materials from biomass
[22:13] Sarah’s favorite bacteria
[26:06] Discovering a bacteria in the chicken gut that eats dairy waste and creates commodity chemical
[29:03] The scrappiest thing Sarah has done as an entrepreneur
[32:00] How the Silicon Valley TV Series is too real
[33:23] 3 startups/founders Sarah loves
[40:00] The one thing not to do with someone you’re negotiating a termsheet with
[45:13] Crispr as a spam filter and “playing g-d”
[52:00] Why cats are serial killers
[57:15] Wrapup