[Senate Hearing 116-581]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 116-581
SECURING U.S. LEADERSHIP IN THE BIOECONOMY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, OCEANS, FISHERIES, AND WEATHER
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
UNITED STATES SENATEs
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 3, 2020
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available online: http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
00-000 PDF WASHINGTON : 2023
SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ROGER WICKER, Mississippi, Chairman
JOHN THUNE, South Dakota MARIA CANTWELL, Washington,
ROY BLUNT, Missouri Ranking
TED CRUZ, Texas AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
JERRY MORAN, Kansas BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska EDWARD MARKEY, Massachusetts
CORY GARDNER, Colorado TOM UDALL, New Mexico
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee GARY PETERS, Michigan
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MIKE LEE, Utah TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin JON TESTER, Montana
TODD YOUNG, Indiana KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona
RICK SCOTT, Florida JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
John Keast, Staff Director
Crystal Tully, Deputy Staff Director
Steven Wall, General Counsel
Kim Lipsky, Democratic Staff Director
Chris Day, Democratic Deputy Staff Director
Renae Black, Senior Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, OCEANS, FISHERIES, AND WEATHER
CORY GARDNER, Colorado, Chairman TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin, Ranking
TED CRUZ, Texas RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin GARY PETERS, Michigan
RICK SCOTT, Florida
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on March 3, 2020.................................... 1
Statement of Senator Gardner..................................... 1
Statement of Senator Baldwin..................................... 2
Witnesses
Dr. Jason Kelly, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Ginkgo
Bioworks....................................................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Jason T. Gammack, Chief Commercial Officer, Inscripta, Inc....... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Megan J. Palmer, Ph.D., Senior Research Scholar, Center for
International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Freeman Spogli
Institute for International Studies (FSI), Stanford University. 11
Prepared statement........................................... 13
Timothy Donohue, UW Foundation Fetzer-Bascom Professor of
Bacteriology, Interim Director, Wisconsin Energy Institute,
University of Wisconsin-Madison................................ 17
Prepared statement........................................... 19
SECURING U.S. LEADERSHIP
IN THE BIOECONOMY
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TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2020
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Science, Oceans, Fisheries, and
Weather,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:15 a.m. in
room SD-562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Cory Gardner,
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Gardner [presiding], and Baldwin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CORY GARDNER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM COLORADO
Senator Gardner. Thank you very much to all of you. We're
going to call this Committee hearing to order. Thank you for
the witnesses and thanks to Ranking Member Baldwin for joining
me at this morning's hearing.
I would also like to extend a special thank you to Jason
Gammack on today's witness panel who joins us from the greatest
state in the greatest country with the greatest skiing in the
country. So thank you for traveling here from Colorado.
Today's hearing is about Securing U.S. Leadership in the
Bioeconomy and ensuring shared values of freedom and human
rights are reflected in the global efforts on research and
related issues for the bioeconomy, and, of course, with the
national conversation focusing much on Coronavirus, your
insights, ideas, and thoughts could be of essential importance
this morning.
Before we get too far into the hearing, I think it might be
helpful to explain what exactly the bioeconomy is and how to
define it.
Earlier this year, the National Academies of Science,
Engineering, and Medicine released a Consensus Study Report
entitled Safeguarding the Bioeconomy. In that report, it is
defined as follows: the U.S. bioeconomy is economic activity
that is driven by research and innovation in the life sciences,
and biotechnology that is enabled by technological advances in
engineering and in computing and information sciences.
Innovations in the bioeconomy could lead to more
sustainable agriculture, improved pharmaceuticals, more
resilient clothing, better formulated vaccines, and a whole
host of other benefits.
Federal funding will be critical to that effort. Agencies,
like the National Science Foundation, National Institute of
Standards and Technology, and Office of Science and Technology
Policy, among others, will be critical to keeping the United
States at the forefront of growing and sustaining the U.S.
bioeconomy spirit.
The National Academies' publication recognizes this and
makes a number of recommendations, including, among others,
requiring the Department of Commerce and the United States
National Science Board to expand and enhance data collection
efforts on the U.S. bioeconomy.
Formalizing the White House-led governmentwide coordination
on issues related to the bioeconomy and boosting U.S. Federal
investment in research that could benefit the growth of the
U.S. bioeconomy.
But for all the enormous opportunities the bioeconomy
sector poses for the United States and the world, it isn't
without challenges. What passes for standard ethical
commitments in the United States may be viewed as unnecessary
hindrances and obstructions in countries like China.
The New York Times published a disturbing story in December
2019 about the Chinese Government's use of DNA to target the
Muslim Uyghur Commission, the minority in the far-flung
Xinjiang Province.
As the Times reported, scientists there are working to
create an image of someone's face using only a DNA sample.
There are obviously deep concerns using such a technique.
As part of this terrible development, it is also clear that
European-backed institutions were in part helping to fund these
experiments, although perhaps unknowingly.
With revelations like this and the threat of reintroduced
diseases from the past, like smallpox and worse, and new and
emerging concerns, like Coronavirus, it's clear that the U.S.
and U.S. companies will have to play a critical role in
settling and setting the ethical underpinning of the global
bioeconomy.
I look forward to discussing these tensions, these
challenges, and these opportunities with the witnesses
testifying today, and with that, I will turn to Senator Baldwin
and then I will introduce the witnesses.
STATEMENT OF HON. TAMMY BALDWIN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WISCONSIN
Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
leading this very important hearing.
I am excited to learn more about the bioeconomy and the
great promise it has for our industries, our rural economy, our
health and our environment, and I look forward to working with
you, Chairman Gardner, and the Subcommittee as we explore ways
to ensure the U.S. has a leadership role in these exciting new
areas.
I would also like to thank the National Academies for
producing the important report about the bioeconomy that has
spurred today's conversation and thank our witnesses for
joining us today to share their perspectives, and I'm
particularly proud to welcome Dr. Donohue from the great state
of Wisconsin.
There is so much potential in the bioeconomy for our
Nation. I am excited about the prospects of new technologies
and innovations that can help strengthen America's
manufacturing and foster long-term economic resiliency in our
manufacturing communities by developing the next generation of
Made in America products.
In Wisconsin, our bioeconomy has deep roots, from farming
to food processing to producing paper and power to keep the
economy running. We've always used the resources available to
build a better life. So in a way, this discussion is really
about the next phase of economic potential in our bioeconomy.
We have some amazing new knowledge coming out of our labs
at UW-Madison and we have top-notch engineers and workers
keeping our manufacturing sector running strong.
The prospects for creating even more value out of our
natural resources and doing so in a sustainable way are in
front of us. Our farmers and manufacturers face a slew of
challenges as they work to meet market demand for more
sustainable products delivered through more sustainable supply
chains, all while coping with the regular day-to-day challenges
of their work and competition they face from across the world.
The current economy and ecological pressures ask a lot of
our industrial leaders, but they are rising to the challenge.
In doing so, they are keeping our economy running while also
working through the very real challenges of figuring out how we
can keep our local economies stable as our businesses and
communities cope with the challenges of becoming more resilient
to more frequent weather extremes and the additional hazards of
a changing climate.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about the work
they are doing, the challenges and opportunities they face as
they work to transition knowledge into economic value.
I also want to hear more from them about what Congress must
do to support the science that will make success in the future
bioeconomy a reality, and, in particular, I am interested in
how we meet the workforce challenges that new industries will
bring with them, particularly industries so focused in STEM
fields.
Thank you again for convening these important conversations
and I look forward to our discussion.
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
I will introduce the three witnesses and if you have a
further introduction of Dr. Donohue,----
Senator Baldwin. I do.
Senator Gardner. Very good. I will turn it over to you for
that.
Dr. Jason Kelly is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive
Officer of Ginkgo Bioworks, a company headquartered in Boston,
Massachusetts. Not every company can be headquartered in
Colorado. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
His multibillion-dollar company has been named as one of
the top growing companies in the bioeconomy space and has
attracted hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and
partnerships with those interested in using biology to solve
challenges.
Mr. Jason Gammack is the Chief Commercial Officer of
Inscripta and joins us from Boulder, Colorado, home of my law
degree and student loan.
Inscripta recently launched the world's first benchtop
platform for digital genome engineering. Mr. Gammack has spent
more than 25 years in the life sciences world working on issues
fundamental to the bioeconomy.
Thank you very much for your participation today.
Dr. Megan Palmer is a Research Scholar at the Center for
International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.
She also received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Founded the Synthetic Biology Leadership
Excellence Program or LEAP, which promotes international
leadership in bio-technology.
I will turn to Senator Baldwin for the introduction of Dr.
Donohue.
Senator Baldwin. I am pleased to welcome Dr. Tim Donohue,
Director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, which is
located on the UW-Madison Campus. The center is funded by the
U.S. Department of Energy and Office of Science. It's focused
on bio-based renewable fuels and research chemicals. The center
does not just stop at discoveries. It is focused on getting new
innovations into pilots, patents, and eventually into commerce.
As you might expect, Dr. Donohue has been recognized by his
colleagues and national organizations for his leadership and
accomplishments. His work is also reflected in the output of
the research center he runs.
So if I might brag on Wisconsin research leadership for a
moment, since the establishment of the Great Lakes Bioenergy
Research Center in 2007, our researchers have made great
strides in increasing the knowledge necessary to transition to
bio-based processes.
They have released 1,300 scientific publications and have
been cited 88,000 times, but it's not just a center focused on
creating knowledge. It is focused on developing new ideas to
provide better solutions to current and future problems and to
that end, the center has helped to spur more than 200 patent
applications which have already resulted in 91 patents.
The research happening on bio-products is happening in the
context of future needs across our economy and because of this
great work and innovation pipeline, we are building a more
resilient economic future for our communities, our state, and
our country and beyond.
So welcome, Dr. Donohue, on Wisconsin.
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
Dr. Kelly, if you would like to begin, then we'll work our
way through the panel. Please keep your comments as close to 5
minutes as you can.
Thank you.
STATEMENT OF DR. JASON KELLY, CO-FOUNDER
AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, GINKGO BIOWORKS
Dr. Kelly. Chairman Gardner, Ranking Committee Member
Baldwin, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the great
honor to speak here today. Thank you for the introduction.
We're one of the faster-growing synthetic biology companies
in the space. So I'll speak to what's happening on the
commercial side but I'm excited that the government is focusing
in this area. For example, the White House held a Bioeconomy
Summit just a few months back as a follow-on from similar
summits in quantum computing and AI as a merging area of the
future. But I think, you know, few in the public have a sense
of, you know, quantum computing is like better computers, AI is
sort of computers that think, but the bioeconomy, synthetic
biology, you know, what is it, right, and so I wanted to start
by just explaining what I thought it was.
So, you know, synthetic biology, the simplest way to think
of it is we will program cells like we program computers and
the reason that's possible is because in every plant, animal,
and microbe out in nature is digital code in the form of DNA
inside those cells. And we can read that code with DNA
sequencing, if you're familiar with the Human Genome Project,
and we can write that code with DNA synthesis or DNA printing.
If you can read and write code, and you have a machine to
run it, you can program it. You can put in new applications,
new apps, and so one of the trends is that the cost to read and
write that code has been dropping dramatically. So the cost to
sequence the first human genome was $100 million in 2000.
Actually, after a meeting just last week, Beijing Genomics in
China announced a new machine that would sequence the human
genome for a $100. So we've had a one millionfold cost
reduction in that technology in the last 20 years.
Writing DNA similarly has dropped by probably a factor of a
thousand to 10,000 over the same period of time, OK, and so
this exponential improvement is opening many new apps.
So let me give you some examples of commercial
applications. So one of my favorites, if you've heard of the
Impossible Burger, so if you go down into Burger King, you can
have an Impossible Whopper. It's a veggie burger. You bite into
this thing and it bleeds. That's interesting. There's not a lot
of blood in plants. How are they doing that? Well, what they've
done is they've taken the gene, the genetic code for
hemoglobin, what makes your blood red, and they've programmed
brewer's yeast, like you would use in a normal brewery. Then
they brew it up in a process very similar to running a brewery
except instead of beer coming out, you get heme, a key food
ingredient that they add into these burgers. And I'm a meat
eater. You know, this thing smells right, tastes right. It's a
veggie burger that doesn't taste like cardboard to me. That's
an amazing app of this cell programming technology.
A second one in agriculture, Ginkgo has a $100 million
joint venture with Bayer Crop Science to work on nitrogen
fertilizer production, OK, and the way you get fertilizer today
is you make it chemically by burning about 4 percent of global
natural gas and pulling nitrogen out of the air.
All right. You ship those bags of fertilizer off to
farmers. They put it on the field. Half of it ends up in the
river, half of it goes to the crop. You get a local
environmental problem. You get larger greenhouse gas
challenges, but we all get to eat, right?
Certain crops, like soybeans, you don't need to fertilize
very much. Why? Well, they have microbes on their roots running
that same process, pulling nitrogen out of the air and
fertilizing the crop.
Corn, wheat, and rice, half of global fertilizer usage,
they don't have these microbes. So what we're doing with Bayer
is we're taking the genetic code. We're reading the code from
the soybean microbe, redesigning it on the computer, typing
ATCG, hitting print, DNA printing it, putting it into the
microbe that lives on corn. And then now you treat that seed,
the microbes grow on the roots, and the corn self-fertilizes.
So you could start to wean those crops off of that synthetic
fertilizer. Second application.
And then the final one, you may have heard of a company
called Moderna Therapeutics up in Cambridge. They have the
first vaccine out going into human trials for Coronavirus. 42
days from the sequence of that virus to that vaccine going out
the door for testing with the FDA. That's incredibly fast for a
vaccine.
How did they do it? Well, their vaccines are different from
traditional vaccines where you are growing up an active virus.
What they've done is they use mRNA, which is similar to DNA
code, and to quote their President Steven Hogue in Time
Magazine, ``mRNA is really like a software molecule in biology.
So our vaccine is like the software to program the body.''
That ability to program cells, just to give you a sense of
the breadth, you're going from consumer products, like a
whopper, to new vaccines for emerging infectious diseases. The
way to think about this is if you think about computers over
the last 50 years, we could put new apps into this technology
to make it do new things, but at the end of the day, a computer
just moves information around. It's good for e-mails and
watching movies, right, but cells are programmable and they
don't move information. They move atoms. They build stuff.
They're in the physical world. They're the important stuff.
The technology to exponentially program that is improving.
So we're talking about things like medicine, things like food.
They produce our atmosphere and clean our water, right? This is
a far more strategically important technology to this country
than computers was and in the next five to 10 years, the
companies are going to be built that determine which country
wins this economic base.
I'm particularly proud that you all are focusing on this
today. I think it's exactly the right time.
So thank you very much for hearing my comments.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Kelly follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Jason Kelly, Co-Founder and Chief Executive
Officer, Ginkgo Bioworks, Inc.
Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, members of the
Subcommittee, thank you so much for this great honor to come and speak
to you today about this exciting moment in the trajectory of synthetic
biology technology and the growing bioeconomy.
My name is Jason Kelly and I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Ginkgo
Bioworks, a Boston-based cell programming company with over 300
employees that is currently valued at over $4 billion. Ginkgo operates
in the emerging field of synthetic biology. In synthetic biology, we
program cells like you program computers. We can do this because cells
run on digital code in the form of DNA. DNA is made up of As, Ts, Cs,
and Gs--not 0s and 1s, but you can read the DNA code with DNA
sequencing and write the code with DNA printing. Ginkgo is the largest
user of DNA printing in the world which we use to program cell ``apps''
for customers ranging from Bayer/Monsanto in agriculture to Roche in
pharmaceuticals. Importantly, Ginkgo and other companies are seeing
exponential improvements in this technology. For example, the cost to
read and write DNA has been improving faster than Moore's Law. Moore's
Law is the rate at which microprocessors in computers (built by
companies like Intel) improve and a metric of one of the fastest
improving technologies in the world.
Synthetic Biology will enable companies to program cells across all
economic sectors. The cellular applications (``cell apps'') of
synthetic biology offer limitless opportunities for biological
manufacturing and innovation, and are making tangible differences in
our daily lives, whether through protecting our environment, improving
our health, or advancing our security.
One of my favorite examples of an application in this space is a
partnership Ginkgo has with Bayer Crop Science, the world's largest
agricultural biotechnology company, to innovate on fertilizer
production. Currently, farmers must apply large amounts of synthetic
fertilizer to grow cereal crops such as wheat, corn, and rice. These
fertilizers are energy-intensive to produce, and cause runoff into
water supplies, generating local environmental problems. Ginkgo and
Bayer created a joint venture called Joyn Bio to engineer microbes that
will live on the roots of these crops and provide them with nitrogen
without the need for synthetic fertilizers, with enormous potential for
economic and environmental benefit. This is just one of countless
examples of how synthetic biology can make our world more sustainable,
safe, and productive.
In the biomedical space, we have a partnership with Synlogic, a
therapeutic company that is engineering probiotic bacteria to treat
patients with metabolic disorders, such as maple syrup urine disease.
Synlogic equips these microbes with genes to fill in the metabolic step
missing in these patients, so that they can break down the metabolite
that is building up and causing the patients' symptoms. We apply our
platform to accelerate the development of these living medicines.
Ginkgo also recognizes the threats and opportunities synthetic
biology poses to U.S. national security. To that end, Ginkgo
participates in several DARPA and IARPA programs to help advance tool
development to mitigate risks and defend against malicious acts. As
part of the DARPA Synergistic Design and Discovery, or SD2, program,
Ginkgo is helping to generate better models to predict the effects of
genetic engineering. Within IARPA's Finding Engineering-Linked
Indicators, or FELIX, program, Ginkgo is developing algorithms to
determine whether DNA sequences have been engineered. Finally, as part
of IARPA's Functional Genomic and Computational Assessments of Threats,
or Fun GCAT, program, Ginkgo is helping to develop screening mechanisms
to more rapidly identify threatening DNA sequences.
The cross-cutting and transformative nature of these applications,
along with the exponential improvements in the underlying technologies
to read and write DNA, have motivated significant investment into this
field by private industry and foreign governments alike. More than $12
billion of venture capital funding has been invested in synthetic
biology companies in the last ten years, most of which are U.S. based.
Simultaneously, allies such as the U.K. and Germany have developed
detailed bioeconomy strategies and near-peer competitors like China
have made huge investments in synthetic biology development. The next
decade will define which countries get to lead the bioeconomy, and much
like in the automobile, airline, or semiconductor industries, the
winning countries will be those that capitalize on first mover
advantage and economies of scale.
Private sector funding, which is often targeted at specific
companies or projects, is not enough for the U.S. to capitalize on
these advantages. It is essential that the Federal government makes
robust investments in the research and development programs that
underpin advancement in synthetic biology. This field was born out of
public grants from agencies including the National Science Foundation
(NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense (DoD), and
National Institutes of Health (NIH). As an early beneficiary of many of
these programs, Ginkgo can attest to the enabling power they can
provide. Thanks to this early investment, American companies like
Ginkgo currently lead in this space. However, to ensure America remains
the global leader in synthetic biology, the U.S. government must
strategically reinvest in its bioeconomy. The U.S. has done this before
with nuclear technology, semiconductors, space technology, the ARPANET,
and the Human Genome Project. Synthetic biology will be as or more
important to the strategic interests of the country than these previous
technologies.
We are pleased to see recognition of the importance of this
critical need in this hearing and in bipartisan initiatives such as the
Industries of the Future Act of 2020 introduced to the full committee
this January and the Engineering Biology Research and Development Act
of 2019 that passed out of the House this past November. We look
forward to partnering with you and your colleagues to ensure this type
of innovation-focused legislation advances and Federal agencies have
the resources and policies they need to keep America at the forefront
of this emerging field.
Thank you for your time and for your continued leadership on these
important issues. I look forward to your questions.
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Dr. Kelly.
Mr. Gammack.
STATEMENT OF JASON T. GAMMACK,
CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, INSCRIPTA, INC.
Mr. Gammack. Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin,
Distinguished Senators, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very
much for the invitation to testify today before you.
I represent Inscripta, a company based in Boulder,
Colorado, that's developing new tools for genome engineering.
As the Chief Commercial Officer, I'm incredibly excited about
the opportunities for startups like ours to help accelerate the
development of the bioeconomy through the creation of advanced
genomic tools for genetic research.
But we are here today to ask for your help. Without careful
government attention to issues like workforce training,
regulation, protection of intellectual property, and global
standards, we may lose our ability to compete and lead in the
global bioeconomy.
I'm here to address engineering biology, sometimes referred
to as synthetic biology. Both fall under a very large category
of biotechnology, terms you're probably more familiar with.
Traditionally, when we think of biotechnology, we think of
the innovation hubs on the East and West Coasts, from Boston to
San Francisco, for example, where the industry was born. But
the opportunity here we're discussing presents unlimited
opportunities for the economic boom for the entire United
States and no area can be left behind.
Synthetic biology involves using natural bio-based
materials to design and manufacture a wide range of products in
a more sustainable way. This includes better ways to feed,
fuel, clothe, transport, and shelter our citizens, among other
things.
In fact, there are very few industries that will not be
touched by the bioeconomy. In the bioeconomy era, rather than
making products of raw materials dug from the earth, pumped
from the earth, or created through harsh chemical processes, we
will produce them through biological ingredients and biological
processes with microbes engineered like living factories.
The beauty of this approach is that nature has, for
billions of years, found ways to make complex highly-
sustainable products through the power of evolution. We can
harness this power and direct it to create products that we
want and need for our growing population. This has the
potential to reinvigorate historical bastions of manufacturing,
such as the Midwest and any region that wants to participate in
this revolution, because the tools needed for this type of
manufacturing will be widely available, easy to use, and
affordable.
Much of this work today is based on fermentation, using
source material that can be sustainably grown wherever land is
abundant. For example, companies are already using yeast
fermentation to sustainably produce important compounds, such
as lactic acid and clothing fibers.
Yeast can be grown in tanks known as fermenters anywhere.
This is why the bioeconomy is such an attractive opportunity
for the middle regions of our country.
At Inscripta, we've designed and built an instrument that
scientists use to engineer microbes in their laboratory with
the goal of creating desired or beneficial outcomes.
For example, we've demonstrated the ability to generate a
14,000-fold increase in the production of lysine. Lysine's a
$3.6 billion globally-traded amino acid used in applications
ranging from nutrition to pharmaceuticals. Imagine the economic
impact, discoveries, and efficiencies of scale across other
industries using similar technology.
We are working with world-renown scientists to conduct
foundational research in antibiotic resistance at a scale that
was previously infeasible with the idea of developing new
generations of antibiotics to fight the most harmful pathogens
and emerging threats.
We're only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg for the
possibilities using these technologies for good. We believe our
platform will become a primary tool enabling the bioeconomy. It
will allow scientists to conduct advanced research and design
sustainable new products in a manner that is efficient, safe,
cost effective, and at a price that's well within reach of
startups, multinationals, and academic researchers at
institutions across our country.
We talk at Inscripta about democratizing access to genome
engineering. It's our guiding principle. This means making
sure, we can make it happen anywhere in a responsible and
safeguarded fashion with no scientist or part of the country
left out.
But as access to genomic engineering technology
accelerates, it's critical to recognize that the same
opportunity available across our country will also present
itself--and in fact already has--in other countries, such as
China.
My industry colleagues and I are here because we want to
see the U.S. lead this bioeconomy revolution just as we did in
the Internet revolution and set the standards for scientific
integrity and biosecurity that will be critical for genome
engineering as it scales globally.
We also believe and are encouraged by the fact that this is
a nonpartisan issue that can unify us as a nation. The
bioeconomy will be a primary driver of the next wave of growth
in manufacturing in the United States as well as being a
catalyst for new job creation. It will create our next
industrial revolution, which will be a bio-industrial
revolution. That revolution in economic and job growth will
happen across our country, but not just along our coasts
because the tools will be ubiquitous to scientists and
researchers.
The legislation before you addresses actions our government
can take to assist the private sector and academic institutions
to develop our bioeconomy. This includes ensuring our learning
institutions are equipped to produce the workforce in the
future. It means removing unnecessary regulations that can
impede it, and it means ensuring the intellectual property is
protected.
A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine states, ``In 2016, the bioeconomy
accounted for 5.1 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.''
In dollar terms, that represents $959.2 billion.
As biological engineering becomes more sophisticated and
capable, it will have an increasingly broad impact on our
economy. However, China's outspending us and they're producing
more graduates than us.
Just as we led in the industrial and tech revolutions, it
is vital to our national security we don't fall behind building
our country and our bioeconomy.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to answering your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gammack follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jason T. Gammack, Chief Commercial Officer,
Inscripta, Inc.
Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, distinguished senators,
ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for the invitation to testify
today concerning House Bill 4373.
I represent Inscripta, a company headquartered in Boulder,
Colorado, that is developing new tools for genome engineering. As Chief
Commercial Officer, I am incredibly excited about the opportunities for
startup companies like ours to help accelerate the development of the
Bioeconomy through the creation of advanced tools for genomic research.
But we need your help. Without careful government attention to issues
like workforce training, regulation, intellectual property, and
standards, we may lose our ability to be competitive and lead in the
global Bioeconomy.
I'm here to address engineering biology, sometimes referred to as
synthetic biology. Both fall under the broader category of
biotechnology, a term you are likely to be more familiar with.
Traditionally, when people think of biotechnology, they think of the
innovation hubs on the East or West Coasts--Boston or the San Francisco
Bay Area, for example, where this industry was born. But the
opportunity we are here to discuss is one that has the unlimited
potential to bring a new economic boom to every corner of the U.S,
including those left behind in the current economy.
It involves using natural, bio-based materials to design and
manufacture a wide range of products in a more sustainable way. This
includes better ways to feed, clothe, fuel, transport, and shelter our
citizens, among other things. In fact, there are few industrial sectors
that will not be touched by the Bioeconomy.
In the Bioeconomy era, rather than make products from raw materials
dug from the earth or created from harsh chemical processes, we will
produce them from biological ingredients produced by microbes that will
be engineered to be living factories. The beauty of this approach is
that nature has billions of years of experience in making highly
complex, sustainable materials through the power of evolution. We can
harness this power and direct it to create the products we want and
need for our growing population.
This has the potential to reinvigorate historical bastions of
manufacturing such as the Midwest--and any region that wants to join in
on the revolution--because the tools needed for this type of
manufacturing will be widely available, easy to use, and affordable.
Much of this work today is based on fermentation, using source material
that can be sustainably grown wherever land is abundant. For example,
companies are already using yeast fermentation to sustainably produce
important components such as lactic acid and clothing fibers. Yeast can
be grown in tanks, known as fermentors, anywhere; this is one reason
why the Bioeconomy is such an attractive opportunity for the middle
regions of our country.
At Inscripta, we have designed and built an instrument that
scientists use to engineer microbes in their laboratories with the goal
of creating desired or beneficial outcomes. For example, we've
demonstrated the ability to generate a 14,000-fold increase in the
production of lysine, a $3.6 billion globally traded essential amino
acid used in applications ranging from nutrition to pharmaceuticals.
Imagine the economic impact of discovering efficiencies at this scale
across other industrial processes.
We are working with world-renowned scientists to conduct
foundational research into antibiotic resistance at a scale that was
previously infeasible, with the idea of developing a new generation of
antibiotics to fight the most harmful pathogens and emerging threats.
We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg on the possibilities to use
this technology for good.
We believe our platform will be one of the primary tools enabling
the Bioeconomy. It will allow scientists to conduct advanced research
and design sustainable new products in a manner that is efficient,
safe, and cost-effective, and at a price well within the reach of
startup companies, multinational corporations, and academic researchers
at universities across our country.
We talk at Inscripta about democratizing access to genome
engineering--it is one of our guiding principles. This means making
sure it can happen anywhere, in a responsible and safeguarded way, with
no scientist or part of the country left out.
But as access to genomic engineering technology accelerates, it's
crucial to recognize that the same opportunity available across our
country will also present itself--and in fact already has--outside our
borders, in countries such as China. My industry colleagues and I are
here today because we want to see the U.S. lead in this Bioeconomy
revolution, just as we did in the Internet revolution, and to set the
standards for scientific integrity and biosecurity that will be crucial
as genome engineering scales globally. We also believe and are
encouraged by the fact that this is a nonpartisan issue and one that
can unify us as a nation.
The Bioeconomy will be the prime driver for the next wave of growth
in manufacturing in the U.S. as well as being a catalyst for new job
creation. It will create our next industrial revolution, which will be
a bio-industrial revolution. And that revolution--in economic growth
and job growth--will happen across our country, not just along our
coasts because the tools will be ubiquitous.
The legislation before you addresses actions our government can
take to assist the private sector and academic institutions as we
develop our Bioeconomy. This includes ensuring that our learning
institutions are equipped to produce the workforce of the future. It
means removing unnecessary regulations that could impede it. It means
ensuring protection for intellectual property. And it means leading in
establishing global standards.
A recent report from the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine states that in 2016, the bioeconomy accounted
for about 5.1 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). In dollar
terms, this represents $959.2 billion. As biological engineering
becomes more sophisticated and capable, it will have an increasingly
broad impact on the economy. However, China is outspending us, and they
are producing many more graduates than we are. Just as we led the last
industrial and tech revolutions, it is vital to the national security
that we don't fall behind other countries on building a Bioeconomy,
either.
Thank you very much. I'm happy to answer your questions.
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Mr. Gammack.
Dr. Palmer.
STATEMENT OF MEGAN J. PALMER, Ph.D., SENIOR RESEARCH
SCHOLAR, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND
COOPERATION (CISAC), FREEMAN SPOGLI INSTITUTE FOR
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (FSI), STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Dr. Palmer. Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin,
Subcommittee Members and staff, thank you for the opportunity
to speak with you today about steering the trajectory of the
bioeconomy to reflect U.S. values and public interest.
My Ph.D. is in biological engineering from MIT but my group
at Stanford now focuses on how we contend with the responsible
development of biotechnology, including issues of safety and
security.
The stakes are high and time is short to make the strategic
decisions needed to create the future bioeconomy that supports
rather than undermines U.S. security and values.
What is the bioeconomy future that we want? It's a future
where we develop the foundational science of the living world.
It's a future where diverse innovators develop products with
biotechnology that help us to feed, fuel, and heal this Nation
and the world in ways that are safer, more sustainable, and
more secure.
It's a future with a citizenry that participates in,
benefits from, and is empowered to make wise decisions about
technologies that interact with their bodies, their data, and
our shared environments, and it's a future where biological
threats from emerging diseases to biological weapons might be
rendered obsolete because we can rapidly detect, defuse and
deter them.
There are many ways that we can be vulnerable. So what are
the futures we must avoid? We must avoid a future where we are
beholden to supply chains that are fraught with security
vulnerabilities and which break when borders harden just as we
are seeing during the outbreak today.
We must avoid a future that undermines American values
where development of biotechnologies are used to suppress
freedoms in the U.S. and abroad.
We must avoid a future in which we close down a rich
science and innovation ecosystem that relies upon an open
exchange of ideas that we all benefit from. And we must avoid a
future where careless development of biotechnology causes
threats to our health and to our environment. Foremost, we must
avoid a future where misinterpretation of our activities leads
to other nations reconsidering bio-technology's use as a
weapon. This is a future that none of us want.
So what is needed for the U.S. to steer toward a desirable
future? We need at least three things. First, the U.S. needs
tools and infrastructure. The U.S. must position itself as a
world leader in measuring and making good biology. We need
scalable and secure infrastructure to connect government,
academia, and industry to key information and materials for
innovation.
Second, we need strategy and coordination. The U.S. needs
people and programs focused on figuring out how to develop
biotechnologies without compromising our security and our
values. The U.S. only gets to do this if we build the tools and
infrastructure and bake these choices and values in from the
start.
This requires policy innovation just as much as technology
innovation and it will require close coordination between
experts in economy, security, and science.
Third, we need community and citizenship. The U.S. must
enable everyone to engage with biotechnology to foster the best
ideas and to make sure they are genuinely in the public
interest. Everyone in the country should be trained to be
literate in biotechnology and the U.S. should be building
training programs needed to grow the diverse interdisciplinary
workforce of the future.
So where are we now? The U.S. is in a leadership position
but that is by no means assured in the future. Last fall, we
had a White House Summit on America's Bioeconomy that
emphasized the strategic importance of biotechnology.
We saw recent passing in the House of the Engineering
Biology Research and Development Act. We see a National
Academies report on Safeguarding the Bioeconomy with very
useful recommendations. There has been formation of interagency
working groups, and we're seeing new agency-specific strategic
efforts, like the DoD's Bio-manufacturing Industrial Innovation
Institutes.
These are important and necessary steps, but I do not
believe they will be sufficient to secure U.S. leadership in
the future. These efforts will need to be supplemented with
increased ambition, resources, and leadership to form a
successful strategy for biotechnology leadership in a rapidly-
changing world.
I'd like to suggest five strategic actions that are
important to be able to secure U.S. leadership in the future.
One strategic action is to support a national lab-scale
effort focused on the foundational science of measuring and
making living systems. This effort can position the U.S. to
define and promulgate standards for the transactions that are
underlying the U.S. and global bioeconomies.
A second strategic action would be to co-situate a center
for strategic policy scholarship in direct conversation with
foundational technology development. This effort can address
these questions in how to design and deploy our infrastructure
and policies for a growing bioeconomy that balances innovation
and security.
A third strategic action would be to form a consorted
bioeconomy coordination and leadership function in government
where agencies that are focused on science, security, and
economy can work closely together. This could be akin to the
National Nanotech Initiative where there are staff whose first
priority is to develop and deploy U.S. biotechnology strategy.
A fourth strategic action would be to develop new lines of
basic and applied biotechnology research funding across
agencies that also integrate consideration of social, economic,
and security issues. Interdisciplinary centers are one
cornerstone of what ought to be a diverse funding system.
I helped to lead the policy part of an NSF Engineering
Research Center that provides one model for how this might
happen.
And a fifth strategic action is to support world-class
training programs from K through 12 through to graduate
studies, including specialized programs. The bioeconomy of the
future will require many skill sets and a citizenry that is
equipped to participate and make wise choices.
The leading program in synthetic biology, the International
Genetically-Engineered Machine Competition, was started 15
years ago, thanks in part to NSF funding. It has trained over
40,000 students in over 60 countries. The U.S. risks losing its
strategic advantage as the competition moves to Europe and the
quickest growing constituency is high school teens from China.
We should be supporting the bioeconomy in clubs across every
congressional district in this country and we should continue
to invite the world to work with us and to learn about our
values.
Thank you for holding this hearing today. This is a
technology that matters, and you have the power to set the
trajectory toward a future bioeconomy that makes us all more
secure. I hope you seek the opportunity. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Palmer follows:]
Prepared Statement of Megan J. Palmer, Ph.D., Senior Research Scholar,
Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Freeman
Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), Stanford University
Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, Senate Subcommittee
members and staff, thank you for the opportunity to share with you
today my thoughts on steering the trajectory of the bioeconomy to
reflect U.S. values and public interests.
My Ph.D. is in biological engineering from M.I.T., but I have spent
the last decade focused on governance issues coupled to the science and
engineering of living systems. I am now a Senior Research Scholar at
the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), part of
the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), at
Stanford University. My group studies how we contend with the
responsible development of biotechnology, including issues of safety
and security. I also lead a number of domestic and international
programs in responsible biotechnology leadership and strategy.
You will have heard from the other witnesses about the enormous
potential of the bioeconomy. We must nourish this potential to ensure a
future that supports rather than undermines U.S. security and values.
The stakes are high and time is short to make the strategic decisions
needed to steer towards a bioeconomy that makes the U.S. more secure
and avoid the futures that make the U.S. more vulnerable.
What is the bioeconomy future we want to secure? It is a future
where we develop the foundational science of the living world. It is a
future where diverse products made with biotechnology help us to feed,
fuel, and heal this nation, and the world, in ways that are safer, more
sustainable and more secure. It is a future with communities of diverse
innovators developing possibilities and products with biotechnology and
with a citizenry that participates in, benefits from, and is empowered
to make wise choices about technologies that interact with their
bodies, their data and our shared environments. It is a future where
biological threats--from emerging diseases to biological weapons--might
be rendered obsolete because we can prevent, rapidly detect, diffuse,
and deter them.
There are many ways to be vulnerable; what are the futures we must
avoid? We must avoid a future where other nations attract away talent.
Biological innovations will only become more important to the economy
and security of nations. Without talented people driving innovations we
become vulnerable to many threats, including remaining unprepared for
the next emerging infectious disease. We are also vulnerable when we
become too dependent on other nations for the things we need to sustain
our societies when things get bad and borders may close, just as we are
seeing during the current COVID-19 outbreak.
We must also avoid a future that undermines American values when
development of biotechnologies can be used to suppress freedoms in the
U.S. and abroad. The same data and technologies used to enable
precision medicine can be used to track and target populations and
minority groups.\1\ Other nations are already penetrating the security
of our bioeconomy industries including firms that hold valuable health
and genomic data. Other nations will use our data to develop
innovations while we are made more vulnerable.\2\ At the same time we
must avoid a future in which we close down a rich science and
innovation ecosystem that relies upon an open exchange of ideas that we
all benefit from, where we can no longer access talented people all
over the world and bring them and their ideas here to be developed.
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\1\ For example: Wee, Sui-lee. (2019, Feb. 21). China Uses DNA to
Track Its People, With the Help of American Expertise. The New York
Times. www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-uighur-dna-
thermo-fisher.html
\2\ National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
(2020). Safeguarding the Bioeconomy. (Report No. 25525). Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.17226/25525.
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We must also avoid a future where careless development of
biotechnology causes threats to our health and to our environment.
Biotechnology is profoundly valuable, but it can carry profound risks
of accidents, reckless behavior, and deliberate
misuse.\3\,\4\ We must avoid a future where we fail to
manage this dual use nature of biotechnology. Foremost, we must avoid a
future where misinterpretation of our activities leads other nations to
reconsider biotechnology's use as a weapon. This is a future none of us
want.
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\3\ Palmer, M. J. (2020). Learning to Deal with Dual Use. Science.
DOI: 10.1126 Retrieved from https://science.sciencemag.org/content/
early/2020/02/26/science.abb1466.
\4\ Palmer, M. J., Fukuyama, F., & Relman, D. A. (2015). A more
systematic approach to biological risk. Science, 350 (6267), 1471-1473.
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What does the U.S. need to secure a desirable future and to ensure
bioeconomy leadership? It needs at least three things.
First, the U.S needs Tools & Infrastructure: The U.S. must position
itself as a world leader in measuring and making with biology. It is
essential to develop scalable and secure infrastructure to connect
government, academia and industry to the information and materials
needed to seed and support innovation and translation.
Second, the U.S. needs Strategy & Coordination. The U.S. needs
people and programs squarely focused on figuring out how to develop
biotechnologies in ways that can deliver benefits without compromising
our security and our values. The U.S. will only get to do this if it
builds the tools and infrastructure and bakes in these choices and
values from the start. This is largely not current practice and it
calls for policy innovation along with shifts in how technological
innovation is incentivized and supported. For this work to be
successful, it will be essential to closely coordinate across
communities focused on science, security and the economy.
Third, the U.S needs Community & Citizenship. The U.S. must enable
everyone to engage with this technology and its many uses to foster the
best ideas and to make sure they are genuinely in the public interest.
Everyone in the country should be trained to be literate in
biotechnology and the U.S. should be building the diverse training
programs needed to grow the interdisciplinary bioeconomy workforce of
the future.
Where is the U.S. now in securing leadership in the bioeconomy ?
The U.S. is in a position of global leadership, having made
foundational early investments in biotechnology research and
development. However, continued leadership is by no means assured. Many
other countries are prioritizing investments in biotechnology to
support their own growing bioeconomies.
There have been promising recent steps to securing U.S. leadership
in the future. Last October the U.S. Office of Science and Technology
Policy (OSTP) convened the White House Summit on America's Bioeconomy
that gathered leaders from across government, industry, academia and
civil society to discuss the strategic importance of biotechnology.\5\
In December, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4373, The
Engineering Biology Research and Development Act of 2019, which
outlines some interagency coordination functions with important
attention to economic, social, security and ethical aspects of the
bioeconomy.\6\ An additional bill under consideration by members of
this chamber, S. 3191, The Industries of the Future Act of 2020,
outlines similar coordination functions and calls for specific
increases in Federal investment in several technology areas, including
biotechnology research, which could also help pave the road to the
biotechnology future we want.\7\ The 2018 U.S. National Biodefense
Strategy also made important steps in acknowledging the need to adapt
policies toward mitigating the complex risks associated with biological
incidents.\8\
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\5\ Summary of the 2019 White House Summit on America's Bioeconomy.
7 Oct. 2019, www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Summary-of-
White-House-Summit-on-Americas-Bioeconomy-October-2019.pdf.
\6\ Engineering Biology Research and Development Act of 2019, H.R.
4373, 116th Cong. (2019)
\7\ Industries of the Future Act of 2020, S. 3191, 116th Cong.
(2020)
\8\ National Biodefense Strategy (2018). Retrieved from https://
www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/National-Biodefense-
Strategy.pdf
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There have also been a number of recent studies from the U.S.
National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) that
outline challenges and opportunities in biotechnology and the
bioeconomy. Notably, in January the NASEM released the Safeguarding the
Bioeconomy report that emphasized a need to couple the promotion and
protection of an emerging bioeconomy industry, and included a series of
useful recommendations.\9\ There has also been formation of interagency
working groups on topics including synthetic biology, and we are seeing
some new agency-specific strategic efforts, like the recent
announcement of the Bioindustrial Manufacturing Innovation Institutes
from the Department of Defense.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
(2020). Safeguarding the Bioeconomy. (Report No. 25525). Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.17226/25525.
\10\ Bioindustrial Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII). (2020,
January 24). Retrieved from https://beta.sam.gov/opp/
bc5905578334429a8a29c0150eb94b45/view.
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These are important and necessary steps but I do not believe they
will be sufficient to secure U.S. leadership in the future. These
efforts will need to be supplemented with increased ambition,
resources, and leadership to form a successful strategy for future
biotechnology leadership in a rapidly changing world.
What specifically could be done to secure future U.S. leadership in
the bioeconomy? There are several strategic actions that I believe
would enhance current efforts to position the U.S. to be a continued
world leader.
One strategic action is to support a national lab-scale effort
focused on biometrology. Such an effort would focus on ensuring U.S.
leadership in the foundational science and tools of measuring and
making living systems. This effort is critical so that the U.S. is in a
position to define and promulgate the standards and specifications for
the transactions underlying the U.S. and global bioeconomy. These
technology-agnostic capabilities, tools, and standards underpin more
applied agency-and industry sector-specific efforts. Such an effort
will require professional researchers drawing upon the knowledge and
capabilities across DOE, DOD, HHS, DOC (NIST) and NSF.
A second strategic action necessary for guiding such efforts is to
co-situate a center for strategic policy scholarship in direct
conversation with foundational science and technology development.
There are many unaddressed foundational questions in how to design and
deploy infrastructure and policies for a growing bioeconomy in a way
that effectively balances innovation and security. We should support
ongoing basic and applied scholarship on these issues including
professional researchers from a number of disciplines. It is critical
that this work not be divorced from technology development, as one of
the most powerful ways to understand and guide future governance
options is by having governance considerations directly inform
technical design criteria.
A third strategic action would be to form a concerted bioeconomy
coordination and leadership function in government whereby agencies
focused on science, security and economy work closely together. This
could be something akin to the National Nanotechnology Initiative,
where there is a staff whose first priority is to develop and deploy
U.S. biotechnology strategy.\11\ This work is important to inform and
guide efforts across many different agencies including developing
robust interfaces with academia, industry and civil society.
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\11\ ``What Is the NNI?'' National Nanotechnology Initiative,
www.nano.gov/about-nni/what.
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A fourth strategic action is to develop new lines of basic and
applied biotechnology research funding across agencies that integrates
consideration of social, economic and security issues. We should
support a variety of funding mechanisms to ensure a broad ecosystem of
researchers. Major multi-year and multi-disciplinary centers are an
important part of this ecosystem as they are nexuses for training,
interdisciplinary research, and commercialization in high-risk high-
reward areas. It is important that such centers have transition plans
and that their goals are coordinated across mission agencies so we
don't lose the people and companies that they have fostered when these
centers sunset. Critically, such centers should support basic and
applied interdisciplinary work on social, political, ethical, legal,
economic, environmental, safety, security and other issues coupled to
getting better at the engineering of living systems. These should be
treated as central research topics, not as afterthoughts that can be
outsourced or done for free.
I helped lead such an effort within a National Science Foundation
(NSF)-supported multi-university Engineering Research Center (ERC) in
Synthetic Biology, called Synberc, which defined and developed much of
the field of synthetic biology as we know it today.\12\ By the end of
10 years of NSF funding, Synberc involved approximately 40 university
labs and 40 industry partners, many of which were formed during the
lifetime of the center, such as Ginkgo Bioworks. I served for 5 years
as deputy director of the ``Policy and Practices'' thrust of Synberc,
which involved supporting basic and applied research, education, and
knowledge brokering, and represented approximately 25 percent of the
center's Federal funding at its 10 year sunset. These efforts generated
new technology and policy approaches that helped anticipate and
mitigate concerns about new biotechnology approaches and products, and
they trained a next generation of practitioners to engage with social
and policy issues proactively. Some of these efforts continue to be
supported through the Engineering Biology Research Consortium
(EBRC)\13\, but without research funding coupled to these types of
coordination networks, we risk losing what we gained from these early
strategic efforts.
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\12\ Bernstein, Rachel. (2016) Synberc Building the Future with
Biology: Ten Years at the Genesis of Synbio. Edited by Leonard Katz et
al., Engineering Biology Research Consortium, ebrc.org/wp-content/
uploads/2019/07/Synberc-10-years-book.pdf.
\13\ ``About.'' Engineering Biology Research Consortium, 2020,
ebrc.org/about/.
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A fifth strategic action is to support world-class training
programs from K-12 through to graduate studies including specialized
programs. The bioeconomy of the future will require many different
skill sets and a citizenry equipped to participate and make wise
choices about the products they develop and use. We should continue to
develop and expand world-leading interdisciplinary training programs at
the undergraduate and graduate level but also supplement these with
renewed efforts at the K-12 level and in specialized training programs,
such as 1-and 2-year associate degree programs, to meet specific
growing industry needs.
It is notable that the world leading training program in synthetic
biology, the international Genetically Engineered Machine Competition,
known as iGEM, was started in the U.S. 15 years ago at M.I.T. thanks in
part to NSF funding directed through Synberc. Today the yearly
competition has trained over 40,000 students from over 60 countries
working in more than 2700 teams to prototype biotechnology innovations.
These students are learning not only how to engineer biology but also
to ask why their innovations are desirable, and for whom. For the last
decade I have been a volunteer director of what we call the ``Human
Practices'' element of the competition,, which provides incentives for
teams to address social and policy issues coupled to their
innovations.\14\ I have also helped lead safety and security programs
at iGEM, and the competition has become a world-leading testbed for
adaptive governance of dual use technologies.\15\
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\14\ ``Human Practices Hub.'' iGEM, 2019, 2019.igem.org/
Human_Practices.
\15\ Millett P, Binz T, Evans SW, Kuiken T, Oye K, Palmer MJ,
Yambao K, Yu S, van der Vlugt C.Developing a Comprehensive, Adaptive
and International Biosafety and Biosecurity Program for Advanced
Biotechnology: The iGEM Experience, Applied Biosafety, In press, 2019.
DOI: 10.1177/1535676019838075
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While the U.S. has been a leader in developing the innovators of
the future through iGEM and other related efforts, such as the
BioBuilder program focused on middle-and high-school students \16\, it
now risks losing this long term strategic advantage. In 2021, the iGEM
competition will be moving to Europe and the quickest growing
constituency in the competition are high school teams from
China.\17\,\18\ The teams that perform the best in the
competition are often those that receive support from their home
countries to seed their efforts, and the U.S. teams have suffered
without this support. The U.S. government should be supporting multiple
iGEM teams and other bioeconomy clubs across every congressional
district in the country and we should make sure we continue to invite
the world to work with us and learn about our values.
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\16\ ``The BioBuilder Educational Foundation.'' BioBuilder, 2020,
biobuilder.org/foundation/about/.
\17\ Headquarters, iGEM. ``We Have a Big Announcement: #GEM Is
Moving, the #GiantJamboree Will Be in #Paris in 2021! Pic.twitter.com/
UQJw8WRaK8.'' Twitter, Twitter, 4 Nov. 2019, twitter.com/igem/status/
1191424787307999234?lang=en.
\18\ iGEM 2018 Annual Report. (2019, March 13). Retrieved from
https://igem.org/wiki/images/d/d1/IGEM_2018_report.pdf.
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Thank you for holding this hearing. Biology is a technology that
will only grow in importance to our societies in the future, and you
have the power to set a course for a future U.S. bioeconomy that makes
us all more secure. I hope you seize the opportunity.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Dr. Palmer.
Dr. Donohue.
STATEMENT OF TIMOTHY DONOHUE, UW FOUNDATION
FETZER-BASCOM PROFESSOR OF BACTERIOLOGY,
INTERIM DIRECTOR, WISCONSIN ENERGY INSTITUTE,
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
Dr. Donohue. Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, and
other Subcommittee Members, thank you for also inviting me to
participate in this hearing.
It is actually truly an honor to speak about securing
leadership in this area in the presence of several of the
Science Coalition's Champions of Science congratulate you.
I want to thank the Subcommittee members for their history
of supporting Federal investment in basic research, commerce,
and legislation, like the American Competes Act.
To provide you with my opinion upfront, the country, its
citizens, and society will benefit from bold interagency
investments in securing U.S. leadership in the bioeconomy. I
ask you to consider the following issues as you map out a
strategy to do this.
We've already heard about the reports that illustrate how
federally funded advances in genomics, molecular biology, and
computational sciences, to name just a few, have set the stage
for bio-based approaches to feed a growing population by
increasing plant and agricultural productivity and quality. In
addition, this investment will allow U.S. citizens to enjoy
clean air, water, and a high standard of living, transform
human health with next generation pharmaceuticals and
antibiotics and empower new industrial production of bio-based
fuels, chemicals, and materials from renewable resources.
Because this bioeconomy touches so many areas, a Federal
investment could create new jobs and support economic growth
nationwide, allow the U.S. to become less dependent on foreign
products, intellectual property, and manufacturing while
transforming medicine and agriculture, safeguarding the
environment, and developing new bio-based chemicals and
materials industries.
The same reports illustrate that other countries are making
significant, often larger, investments in the bio-economy by
simply capitalizing on previous investments made with taxpayer
dollars. Moving quickly and boldly can ensure that U.S.
companies, citizens, and the economy reaps the benefits of
homegrown technologies.
Many employees of this new bioeconomy will need training in
STEM-intense fields, functioning in interdisciplinary and
collaborative teams that span field-work, laboratory, and
computational area.
However, this bioeconomy is also very different in that its
success will also rely very heavily on farmers, laborers, and
educators who inspire future members of this community to be
part of a new and diverse workforce.
Senator Baldwin already mentioned that at UW-Madison, I
direct Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, which is one of
four U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Bioenergy
Research Centers charged with producing hydrocarbon fuels and
chemicals from lignocellulosic or non-food plant biomass.
If I may, I would submit the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research
Center is an exemplar along with its partner, BRCs, of the
kinds of things that the bioeconomy needs to consider and can
do for the country.
We are building a nationwide crop productivity atlas so
energy crops can be grown without competing for food
production, while modeling how refinery replacement on the land
can lower the cost of biomass transport and product
distribution to consumers. Also combining traditional breeding
with systems and synthetic biology to improve the productivity
and value of energy crops to farmers and the industry, and
developing strategies for converting as much of the biomass as
possible into fuels and chemicals. We want to leave no carbon
left behind.
At the same time, we have trained over a thousand
scientists and staff that are already part of the workforce in
industry, government, technology transfer, nonprofit
organizations, K through 12, and, yes, academia.
Some unexpected discoveries that may hit home to many of
you are the following: we recently patented a process by which
we can create acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol,
from plant biomass instead of the coal tar where it is
currently produced.
Based on this innovation and others, we now have experts in
dairy food processing, forestry, animal, and municipal waste
industries coming to us to teach them how to convert their
abundant carbon streams into valuable chemicals.
Senator Baldwin mentioned technology transfer. I will say
in collaboration with our partner, the Wisconsin Alumni
Research Foundation, we have filed over more than 200 patent
applications, executed over a hundred intellectual property
licenses and options, and formed five startup companies and
formed strong alliances with companies across the economic
space that will be important for the bioeconomy to move
forward.
Before closing, I want to stress that this initiative can
create products, jobs, and benefits close to home, allowing all
regions of the country to reap its benefits. We have all seen
the negative impact of disruptions in the supply chain of
fuels, chemicals, medicines, or other essential services. By
hosting elements of the bioeconomy across the U.S., we will
have the supply chain that is more secure, more resilient to
periodic interruption, and more able to respond to the ever-
growing needs of our citizens.
Finally, as a member of the university community, I predict
that tomorrow's workforce is ready to be part of a bold
initiative to secure our competitiveness and global leadership
in this field.
Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Donohue follows:]
Prepared Statement of Timothy Donohue, UW Foundation Fetzer-Bascom
Professor of Bacteriology, Interim Director, Wisconsin Energy
Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Baldwin, and other distinguished
members of the Subcommittee, thank you for holding this important
hearing and for inviting me to speak on securing U.S. leadership in the
bioeconomy. It is an honor to be here alongside these expert witnesses
and to speak about this topic in front of several of the Science
Coalition's Champions of Science. I want to thank members of this
subcommittee for their long-standing history of supporting Federal
investment in basic research and legislation such as the America
COMPETES Act that drives the innovation which makes the U.S. the envy
of the world in making advances needed to move society forward. To
provide my conclusion at the outset, I think the U.S., its citizens,
and society will benefit from bold, inter-agency Federal investments in
securing U.S. leadership in the bioeconomy.
I am a professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison where my research focuses on bio-based conversion of renewable
resources into products. I have served on numerous Federal and
international research and advisory panels, led large federally-funded
cross-disciplinary biotechnology graduate training programs, and am a
Past President and current Secretary of the American Society for
Microbiology, one of the largest life sciences professional societies
in the world. Since 2007, I have led the U.S. Department of Energy-
funded Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, a renewable fuels and
chemicals center that has trained over 1,000 students and staff, and
developed technologies leading to 200 patent applications and the
formation of five start-up companies. I also serve as interim director
of the Wisconsin Energy Institute, an interdisciplinary academic
catalyst for biological, physical, and computational research programs
that is providing the workforce and knowledge needed to develop
tomorrow's renewable energy and bio-based industries.
I would ask you to consider the following issues as you map out a
Federal strategy to secure U.S. leadership in the bioeconomy.
The bioeconomy space is broad. We can consider this initiative due
to previous federally funded basic science advances in genomics,
molecular biology, and computational sciences to name a few. The
advances made from these investments provide a foundation of approaches
and knowledge to support the development of the bioeconomy. Recent
reports from the National Academies, the Administration, Federal
Agencies, and other organizations, plus the comments of other invited
speakers today illustrate the potential for bio-based approaches to:
Develop sustainable strategies to feed an ever-growing
population by increasing plant and agricultural productivity
and quality,
Provide strategies to ensure that future U.S citizens enjoy
clean air, water, and a high standard of living,
Transform human health by providing everything from new
pharmaceuticals, reagents for precision medicine, and next
generation antibiotics, and
Produce cost-competitive fuels, chemicals, and materials
from abundant renewable resources.
Because the bioeconomy is broad and an interdisciplinary affair, it
is my opinion that a bold, inter-agency government investment is
required to transform local, non-food, renewable materials into new
revenue streams for farmers and industries across the U.S. The success
of the bioeconomy could allow existing industries to access new markets
with new bio-based and biodegradable products and materials, growing
their economic impact and job base. Given the abundance and diverse
suite of renewable materials that are available to feed the bioeconomy,
this initiative could:
Produce bio-based chemicals and materials that industry
cannot currently produce,
Create new jobs and support economic growth nationwide,
Allow the U.S. to become less dependent on foreign products,
intellectual property, and manufacturing processes, and
Transform medicine and agriculture, and safeguard the
environment.
Much of the innovation that will drive development of this
bioeconomy is based on past taxpayer investment in basic science. The
reports I mentioned earlier illustrate that other countries are making
significant investments in the bioeconomy, often capitalizing on
discoveries made in the U.S. Moving quickly and boldly will help secure
our leadership position in this rapidly emerging field so that U.S.
citizens, companies, and the economy reap the benefits of home-grown
technologies.
The needs of a bioeconomy workforce. These same reports also
predict that by 2030 the bioeconomy has the potential to contribute
more than 250 billion dollars in annual revenue and add more than a
million jobs to the U.S. economy. The technical foundation of the
bioeconomy will require many members of the workforce to have
significant training in STEM-intensive fields. The success of the
bioeconomy will also depend on a workforce with capacity, interest, and
ability to be part of interdisciplinary and collaborative teams that
span field, laboratory, and computational settings. Artificial
intelligence, along with life cycle and technoeconomic analyses will
become increasingly important as the bioeconomy develops. A distinct
and important characteristic of the bioeconomy is that it's success
will also rely on contributions from farmers, laborers, and educators
who inspire others to be part of a diverse, educated workforce.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Bioenergy Research Centers as a
bioeconomy exemplar. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I am the
director and principle investigator of the Great Lakes Bioenergy
Research Center. Great Lakes Bioenergy is one of four U.S. Department
of Energy Office of Science Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs) charged
with identifying and solving the basic science challenges associated
with producing hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals from lignocellulosic, or
non-food, plant biomass. (Information on the BRC program and its active
industry interactions is provided to the committee in supplementary
material). The transportation fuels and petrochemicals sector has
become a global, multi-trillion dollar per year industry to meet
society's ever-growing needs for transportation fuels, plastics, and
other chemicals that we depend on every day. The BRCs work together as
a network to develop the knowledge needed for the sustainable
production of a variety of bio-based fuels and chemicals that are
currently derived from fossil fuels.
I would propose that Great Lakes Bioenergy and its partner BRCs
provide lessons for how the bioeconomy could operate. Our research
considers the entire value chain that a bio-based refining industry
will need to be environmentally and economically sustainable. This
includes:
The biomass available to support the production of fuels and
chemicals across the U.S.,
The issues associated with growing dedicated energy crops on
non-food land,
The energy, fertilizer, and other inputs into the production
of valuable bioenergy crops,
The features of crops that will increase their value to
farmers and industry, and
The placement of biorefineries that minimize the costs of
biomass transport and product distribution.
In addition, the BRCs are addressing challenges that will allow
tomorrow's biorefineries to generate valuable products from as much of
the biomass as possible. By converting as much of the carbon in biomass
as possible into fuels and products, a new biorefinery industry can
reduce the selling price of fuels by also making profitable chemicals,
including bio-based products that cannot be made by existing
technology.
Since its founding in 2007, Great Lakes Bioenergy has made
contributions that cut across all of the areas highlighted above. They
include:
Building a nationwide atlas of crop productivity so farmers
can identify acreage available to grow dedicated bioenergy
crops without competing with food production,
Combining traditional breeding with systems and synthetic
biology to improve the productivity and value of dedicated
bioenergy crops,
Developing low-cost, renewable methods for isolating biomass
components needed to produce targeted products,
Engineering microbial chassis that produce fuels and
chemicals from as much of the biomass carbon as possible, and
Training over 1000 scientists who are now working in
industry, government, technology transfer, nonprofit
organizations, K-12 education, and academia.
The U.S. bioeconomy is poised to utilize technology derived from
Federal investment in basic research. As an example, Great Lakes
Bioenergy findings have led to more than 200 global and U.S patent
applications, over 100 intellectual property licenses and options, and
the formation of five start-up companies. To achieve these goals, we
and our technology transfer partner, the Wisconsin Alumni Research
Foundation, have developed strong interactions with companies in the
agricultural, fuels, chemicals, fermentation, engine, and venture
capital sectors. The technology outputs and active industry
interactions for all four BRCs is provided in the supplementary
materials. I trust this overview illustrates that Great Lakes Bioenergy
and the BRC program is an excellent model for the type of academic,
industry, and technology transfer ecosystem that will be needed to
secure U.S. leadership in the bioeconomy.
In the course of these studies, Great Lakes Bioenergy also made
several unanticipated discoveries that one would expect from high-risk,
basic science, academic research programs. To give one example, we
patented a process to produce acetaminophen, the active ingredient in
pain relievers like Tylenol, from renewable biomass instead of coal tar
that is the current source of this compound. Other advances in making
products from renewable residues have led members of the dairy, food
processing, forestry, animal, and municipal waste industries to fund
academic research that will enable them to convert their abundant, low-
value waste streams into higher-value chemicals, biomaterials, bio-
recyclable plastics, and other polymers.
Before closing, I want to stress that the bioeconomy can generate
products, jobs, and economic benefits close to home. This
distinguishing feature of the bioeconomy will allow all regions of the
U.S. to reap the economic and other benefits of producing valuable
products that they currently import, from renewable resources. Our
citizens have also seen or experienced the disruptions to fuels,
chemicals, medicines, and other essential services caused by natural
disasters. By hosting elements of the bioeconomy across the U.S., the
country will have a distributed and sustainable supply chain that is
more secure, more resilient to periodic interruption, and more able to
respond to the ever-growing needs of its citizens.
Finally, as the father of a college-age son and a university
employee, I have the pleasure to work with young people every day. I
predict that tomorrow's workforce will be ready to help the bioeconomy
advance society in a sustainable way. On their behalf and on behalf of
my colleagues, I want to again thank the committee and its members for
your past support of basic research, and for the invitation to speak
today. We want to work together to advance a bold, inter-agency,
initiative to secure U.S. competitiveness and global leadership in the
bioeconomy. If asked, I stand ready to help as you plan and embark on
this journey.
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Dr. Donohue.
I apologize for stepping out. I had to vote at the Energy
Committee and so I apologize for leaving momentarily.
We will begin our questions. So thank you very much for the
time here.
Your opening statements brought up a question, I think,
relating to sort of who do you turn to at the Federal
Government for either regulatory guidance or assistance or
collaboration?
Dr. Palmer, you mentioned in your statement some strategic
outlines that we should accomplish. For agriculture, it's the
Department of Agriculture. For Coronavirus, it's the Department
of Health and the various CDCs and within that system.
For biotechnology, the bio-industrial revolution, as was
said, whom do you turn to at the Federal level? Mr. Gammack,
I'll start with you.
Mr. Gammack. So it's a great question and we're starting
here.
Senator Gardner. Yes. So really, the answer is because it
is so overlapping because there are----
Mr. Gammack. It is.
Senator Gardner.--so many pieces from different areas,
there is no really one sort of agency, department, or
coordination that you look at?
Mr. Gammack. There isn't, and different departments have
different stakes in the game, and so Dr. Palmer will talk about
biosecurity and at Inscripta, we take bio-security very
seriously.
The U.S. Government has made tremendous efforts in
biosecurity, understanding pathogens and so on. For us to get
access to some of that data to help ensure our platform is
secure would be beneficial, but we've had challenges in gaining
access to some of those data, as well, and so there is a need
for interdepartment coordination, interagency coordination.
Senator Gardner. Dr. Palmer, you mentioned Federal
laboratories and some of the work they're doing.
Is there a Federal laboratory in the system right now that
is working more with the bio work that you're doing, the bio-
synthetic work that you're doing and others?
Dr. Palmer. There are a number of national labs that are
working in this space, and they all play important roles.
At Stanford, we have SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
and nearby, we have Lawrence Berkeley National Labs that are
both working in this space. It requires national labs to be
working together to----
Senator Gardner. And you don't see that necessarily see
that right now in the----
Dr. Palmer. No, and your question really comes to the point
that I was trying to make: that we need better cross-government
coordination on these issues. We need a strong coordinating
office that's able to combine science and technology, economic
considerations, and security considerations. It really requires
all hands on deck.
Senator Gardner. And if I could go through just real quick
every single one of you and just hear the answer. Many of you
mentioned the U.S. leadership. Many mentioned China, as well
and other emerging programs in other countries.
One of the two critical items that the United States needs
to accomplish in order to remain a leader, is it on the
workforce side, the training side, the education side? Is it on
the Federal research dollars, the coordination side?
Dr. Donohue, I'll start with you.
Dr. Donohue. Well, I would come back to a point that was
made by Jason from Ginkgo Bioworks. Technically, we need to
figure out how to write DNA a lot faster and a lot cheaper. All
of this DNA that we've sequenced is basically in the cloud. It
is not in my freezer. So we need to be able to get these DNA
sequences out of the cloud and put them in my freezer so that
all of us at the table can do responsible experiments with.
I do think we need a lot of interagency coordination that
you just mentioned and you brought up in your last question
because this initiative will reach across all of the obvious
players, NIH, NSF, DOE, and USDA. It'll hit NIST because we're
going to make new products. They need to be standardized and be
put out there in the market in a responsible way. As we're
looking at agriculture, we're looking to do it more with
satellites and looking at crop productivity across the
landscape instead of with undergraduates or with drones. Thus,
we also need to be talking to NASA and NOAA about how to help
us.
Senator Gardner. I have got 1 minute left. So I want to get
to all three. Dr. Palmer?
Dr. Palmer. In terms of two strategic elements, the first
is this foundational science of measuring and making. NIST
certainly is critical in developing and promulgating standards
in this space that can underlie the bioeconomy and critically,
in developing interfaces with those types of public datasets
alongside of the various constituencies who play a role.
Second, I think workforce development is critical. We need
the people who are able to use those data and are able to
develop the companies of the future.
Senator Gardner. Thank you. Mr. Gammack?
Mr. Gammack. So being sensitive with time, I'll agree with
everything that the previous panel members have said.
I will say that workforce training is critical. Try to find
a computational biologist and hire them. It is very, very
difficult.
The other element I'll put on the table that hasn't been
discussed is the de-siloing of information. There is an
incredible amount of inefficiency in our scientific process
where people will silo their findings, which isn't publicly
available to others to then iterate and learn upon.
Senator Gardner. Thank you very much.
Dr. Kelly.
Dr. Kelly. I would say on the Federal research side, there
are opportunities for the government to do things that are pre-
commercial for the industry. The best example of this that I
like, you know, the Human Genome Project did this on DNA
reading. That's the human genome.
You know, we have a natural resource in this country which
is within our 50 states is 30 percent of the world's
biodiversity for all the non-human genomes. I mean that's a
natural resource like our oil wells, right? That is genetic
code that for billions of years has been evolving and it's
essentially encoding functional nanotechnology and by making
that available to the companies in the United States and then
importantly, as Dr. Donohue said, pulling it out of that cloud
and then printing it and testing it. That's our code library,
right, and if the U.S. established that as an asset, that would
give us an enormous amount of soft power, I believe, out in the
world.
Those are the sort of things that are a follow-on to the
Human Genome Project directed toward the engineering and design
of biology that the government could fill a big gap.
Senator Gardner. Great. Thanks, Dr. Kelly.
Senator Baldwin.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
I want to dig a little deeper in some of the things that
we've just been discussing. Related to workforce development,
almost all of you have mentioned that the National Academy's
report highlighted that we need to build and sustain a skilled
workforce to support the bioeconomy, and I know across the
state of Wisconsin and across the country, industries are
already struggling to meet their workforce needs, particularly
in STEM fields.
It's clear that we must continue to ensure a strong
pipeline of the scientists and the researchers, the innovators
to make the discoveries that will drive the bioeconomy forward.
But I'm interested in hearing what your perspectives are on
the workers who will run the factories, the farms, the
hospitals, and other facilities that will make these
innovations sort of inter-reality. They will be STEM workers,
too.
Do you agree? If so, how do you think we should go about
supporting both sides of that bioeconomy workforce?
Dr. Kelly, I'd like to start with you and then go through
the whole panel.
Dr. Kelly. Sure. So I think there are two aspects that are
sort of STEM manufacturing, if you want to think of it that
way. One, the technology to print DNA and to read DNA is very
much an advanced manufacturing technology.
You visit our facility in Boston; it's 100,000 square feet
of advanced equipment with operators in front of it printing
DNA and engineering these cells. That's Number 1.
We finish a cell. We finish that, say, microbe for Bayer
and it's going to go be deployed in the environment. That's
farming and fermentation, right? So the tools to deploy biology
are not going to be new. It's going to be giving those skill
sets that are actually not in Boston, in fact. Those are going
to become more valuable skill sets in an era where a corn plant
doesn't grow an ear of corn; it grows a microchip, right? That
makes farming a lot more valuable technology in the future and
that skill set more valuable.
Thank you.
Mr. Gammack. So again, I agree with my panel members here.
Certainly, the training in the hard sciences is going to be
critically important. As I said, computational sciences is
critical. We look at the amount of data produced in biology.
It's astronomical. The challenge with the data produced in
biology, it all needs to be retained.
Unlike, say, astronomy where we can gather data, analyze
it, then remove the data, in biology, we need to gather the
data, analyze it, keep it, and reanalyze it because our
learning's continually changed.
So really developing that hardcore science around data
analysis, big data analysis and ensuring that those training
opportunities are available is critically important.
The point that Jason brings up, which I agree with as well,
is not everyone has to have a Ph.D. to be successful in the
bioeconomy. The bioeconomy will revitalize the Midwest. We need
those feedstocks. We need to build the plants in the Midwest
and fermentation is a messy science. It's not a clean science.
You don't need a high-tech lab to run a fermentation plant.
And so retraining existing workers to work in plants that
have yet to be built or will be built shortly that are under
standard mechanical engineering principles that don't require
Ph.D.s in biology or computational science but understand how
to operate a plant and run a plant.
Dr. Palmer. I would agree with my fellow panelists here.
We really need a diverse workforce and we're seeing this
even with the teams of the International Genetically Engineered
Machine Competition. It is interdisciplinary team-based
science. It's not just biological sciences; it is many
different types of skill sets from business development
elsewhere. Critically, there are a bunch of specialized skill
sets that are pain points in the industry. Fermentation is a
really good example of this where we just can't get enough
people.
We must also recognize that because biology is so broad and
it will affect so many sectors, we need many people who are
specialists in their specific sector who can develop those
interfaces with biotechnology and develop those specialized
products and services. There are rich opportunities and many of
these one-to-two-year training programs or retraining programs
will be critical, as well.
Dr. Donohue. So I am not going to repeat what all my
previous panel members have said, but I'll just put it out
there in a slightly different way.
STEM-based people who are not trained like I was when I was
a student and a graduate student. I lived in a silo. I learned
how to do biochemistry and microbiology. Everyone in my lab now
is doing team-based science, so this is what's going to drive
the STEM advances in this field.
I know both of you Senators come from states that have
agricultural and forestry activity. We need biomass producers
to think about what they can put on their land to put meat and
milk on their table. We have a dairy industry in Wisconsin. We
know how to gather milk and move it to co-ops and then process
it. We're going to need to do the same things with all of our
renewable materials. Those are farmers, those are truckers.
Within those refineries, it's not glorified technical Ph.D.s
that are needed to run those facilities.
When the bioenergy research centers were formed by DOE, I
think they estimated that of the million or more jobs that
would be created by this industry, only 10 to 20 percent of
them required a Ph.D. degree. So the vast majority of people in
this space will be blue-collar associate degrees people that
will benefit from this.
Senator Gardner. I had just leaned over to Senator Baldwin.
As you said, we will need all degrees. I was hoping that
included political science. She actually has a real----
Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you.
You know, Dr. Kelly, you talked about agriculture. I have
an agricultural background and grew up selling farm equipment
for years. We sold seed or dealt with seed that had a coding on
it. Whether it was a fungicide to keep the seed from rotting or
a pesticide to keep the mice from eating the seed before it got
planted, but you're talking about seed that's not just a
coding, it's sort of interactive with the plant itself that
turns it into something else.
Could you describe that a little bit more, maybe go into
some of the other types of technologies and breakthroughs
you're talking about here?
Dr. Kelly. Yes. Chairman Gardner, that's a great question.
So, yes, the rate of improvement--I think people don't realize
the rate of improvement in agricultural technology, you know,
ranging from the beginnings in automation of farming, precision
farming, satellite, you know. It's just on and on in terms of
how technology gets deployed and what we're talking about here
is essentially a living technology, right?
So the seed is one important piece of living technology.
However, for example, on your skin right now are a bunch of
microbes living. There's a micro-biome associated with the
plant and it turns out the interaction between those microbes
and the plant is very important and so some existing seed
treatments include microbes that help the plant be healthier.
What's new here is where we're starting to be able to
program those microbes to make them do things that they haven't
been able to do before and so the example I really like again
is this ability to fertilize the crop.
Well, there's no way right now for corn to fertilize
itself, but we know there are microbes out there that live in
nature that do do that for other plants. If we could just
reprogram the microbes that are friendly with corn to have that
capability, well, suddenly now the corn has been given that new
trait, that new ability. And so what's really important about
this is the rate you can program a microbe is quite fast, and
so we can iterate much more quickly on those designs with our
partners who know the agriculture industry, Bayer, to find new
important traits to track tolerance for lines of production.
Senator Gardner. If I could inject real quick because----
Dr. Kelly. Please.
Senator Gardner.--if you look at a corn plant right now,
you have traits. I don't know if it's a GMO trait or just a
breeding trait that the corn leaf, instead of enfolding when it
gets hot, will stay broad and point up so that it----
Dr. Kelly. You do know a lot about this, yes.
Senator Gardner.--helps the photosynthesis. But a hailstorm
comes through and it doesn't matter how well it
photosynthesizes or not. I mean, are you talking about
something that could actually create a better healing process
for after a hailstorm or something like that?
Dr. Kelly. Super interesting question. Yes, so what is
exciting is that these microbes are sort of all over the crop.
So the ones I've been speaking about are the ones in the roots
because that's where the nutrient production is, right, but
actually in fact there are microbes all over the leaves of the
corn.
In fact, some of your pests that pop up are microbial, just
sort of like acne on your skin is a microbial thing. So if you
think about the best way to fight that, maybe it's not chemical
pesticides in the future. It's actually live cells that help to
repair after that hailstorm and prevent the crop from getting
an infection effectively. We fight that biology with biology
and those are some of the things that people actually are
working on, yes.
Senator Gardner. Mr. Gammack, we've had various debates in
Colorado over the years about GMO labeling, GMO issues.
I'd like to hear from the panel and we may not have time
for this. How do we make sure that people understand what we're
doing here because if we're going to feed, clothe the world,
this technology has to flourish, right, and so how do we make
sure that we are giving people the information they need to be
comfortable with these debates?
Mr. Gammack. Yes, no. It's an exceptionally good question,
Senator Gardner, and, you know, we have a lot we can learn from
the GMO stories because in many cases, science is weaponized,
knowing the claims that were being made were not proper claims.
So for us, when we look at how we educate folks, it's
really important that they understand the beneficial
opportunities that these technologies bring, and I think the
synthetic biology or engineered biology world is somewhat
unique, similar to the IT world, where innovation moves so
quickly to the consumer.
You know, the great example, I mean, if you would have
asked me two years ago if Burger King would sell fake meat as a
whopper, I would have thought you were crazy and, of course,
now we know that the impossible burger is widely available in
the United States, which is entirely a synthetic biology-based
product.
So for us, it's about really showing the value of the
product and moving it quickly to the consumer so they
appreciate both the economic value as well as the lifestyle
improvement for the consumer. I think it's really, really
important for us.
Senator Gardner. Thank you. Does anybody else want to add
to that?
Dr. Palmer. Education and then training is critical to
this, as are these types of K through 12 programs, including
clubs. We're already seeing the emergence of community
biospaces where people can interact directly with the
biotechnology and understand the choices they're already making
about how biotechnology impacts their lives.
These types of groundswell investments in the citizenry
that will be shaping biotechnology are critical so that they
can appreciate the way that biology manifests in every
different place in this country and many different places in
the world. We've seen this through places like the iGEM
Competition where young people are excited about this
technology and they're able to work with their families and
their communities to tell them what this technology looks like
and what it can do.
Senator Gardner. Dr. Kelly, did you have something you
wanted to add?
Dr. Kelly. Yes. I would just add, you know, that about half
of your therapeutic drugs today are made with GMOs. So my
father is a Type 1 diabetic. So, you know, since 1981, when
human insulin came on the market, he has been consuming a GMO,
right. And that, you know, people are able to make that
judgment if they see the value, and so I think a lot of what's
coming is things like the impossible burger: consumer-facing
positive traits where people say, yes, I'll take that trade.
Senator Gardner. Very good. Thank you.
Senator Baldwin.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
Dr. Donohue, I think about our long history in a
bioeconomy, and how the current bioeconomy is susceptible to
disruptions or artificial shifts in market signals.
So, for example, with corn going into ethanol, when you see
recent actions taken by the EPA that undermine the renewable
fuel standard and expectations of the markets that will be
there; or a lumber mill going under when it's the largest
employer in a county, that affects the forest economy, and the
timber economy in the northern part of our state. So all of
these challenges can be major disruptions.
Can you discuss how innovations and the investments in bio-
based product research can help improve economic resiliency to
keep our economy running strong with an eye to future
opportunities that can ensure our companies stay up and running
even when these disruptions or economic forces drive change?
Dr. Donohue. So I'll take a first stab at that as an ivory
tower academic and let some of my other more industry savvy
people answer a great question.
So I see a lot of what we're doing as making two types of
futures. One type of future is providing other products for
existing industries that are struggling. So you mentioned the
dairy industry. You mentioned the forestry industry. They have
one market. They sell one thing, but they have residues. We all
have residues.
Companies don't like to call them waste but that's the
colloquial term for these and anything that we can do to make
value out of those residues affects their bottom line.
We've already shown at academic lab scale that if we can
make a product out of the other part of plant biomass, the
ligin that people were telling us to burn 12 years ago, we can
actually reduce the selling price of the fuel by 25 percent
without affecting the bottom line of the refinery, right? So
you're making co-products.
We have the dairy industry coming to us and talking about
that issue right now. We're working with people for the Center
for Dairy Research on campus, and with some funding from the
National Dairy Council, we are trying to make food-grade
products out of milk permeates, out of leftover yogurt, and out
of Greek yogurt. They're all different. I know what the
chemical composition is now.
What can we make to help a struggling dairy industry make
other products to impact their bottom line?
The second future is new industries that you've heard
others talk about. If we do this right, we can place those
industries all over every state in the country because I think
every state has something to give and that will create rural
economic development and jobs.
These refineries need to be close to where the materials
are. If they need to be shipped a thousand miles to go from
where they're available to where they're going to be refined,
the economics just go in the tank. So we can do this locally
for people.
Dr. Kelly. Maybe add one thing. You know, I think we tend
to take biology for granted, you know, you mentioned the timber
industry, farming, right?
Think about when you plant a seed, right? You plant a seed,
you add air, water, and sunlight, and this thing manufactures
itself out of the air, it produces solar panels on the leaves.
You know, it's an unbelievable piece of manufacturing
technology, dramatically superior to our traditional kind of
industrial revolution era manufacturing, and what we've lacked
is the ability to program it to make all the things around us,
but the reality is it's an intrinsically much more powerful
manufacturing technology.
So if you play the tape out on this exponentially improving
technology, it makes it easier to program those cells to do new
things. Well, everything's going to end up being biologically
manufactured. You're not going to be closing lumber mills.
You're going to be opening them, right? That's where all the
manufacturing's going to consolidate, particularly in a world
where we're looking to try to make things more renewably.
So, you know, I actually am bullish on the long arc here
and I think this transition should drive more toward those bio-
based manufacturing industries, not less.
Senator Gardner. Thank you.
As we look toward leadership and the points that you have
made, you know, I think about if we have one sort of agency,
one department that is sort of coordinating amongst all of
them, it can be good, but also I don't want to cutoff any kind
of innovations by saying this is the route that you take.
So would it be helpful to identify perhaps a national lab
as sort of the coordinator or something like that? I've asked a
similar question to this before but I want to make sure I'm
understanding. Would it help to have OSTP heading this? Would
it be NSF that should be in charge of it? Should it be DOE?
Would it help to have one sort of center that can coordinate
across all the spectrum of government agencies and programs?
I'll just quickly go down the panel, if we could quickly answer
that question.
Dr. Donohue. So as an academic, I would say I would think
you need good interagency cooperation. Many places live in
silos.
Senator Gardner. And can that be done without identifying
one person to create that coordination?
Dr. Donohue. I don't know enough about how things work
within the Federal Government. So I think I'll bounce that one
back to you, Senator.
Senator Gardner. Thank you. Dr. Palmer?
Dr. Palmer. We need many agencies that are coordinating.
Again, as I said previously, economy, science, and security all
need to be working in lockstep and those mission portfolios
differ across different agencies.
I offered one model, which is the National Nanotechnology
Initiative as a potential starting place. We need to really
look at the benefits of different types of interagency
coordination. The existing H.R. 4373 has some coordination
capacities that are articulated there. I think they need to be
stronger so that this isn't the second priority but the first
priority of a dedicated staff. We also need central investments
in foundational science and technology capabilities that
interfaces with mission-specific strategic activities, like the
DoD's Manufacturing Innovation Institutes (MIIS).
Senator Gardner. Thank you. Mr. Gammack, Dr. Kelly,
anything else?
Mr. Gammack. So again, without repeating what they said, I
am in complete agreement, although I will kick it up a notch.
This needs to be the next moon shot. This is the next
iteration of our economy and if that can be done through
interagency connectivity, great. I don't have the same level of
confidence. I think it needs to be a higher priority.
Senator Gardner. Thank you. Dr. Kelly.
Dr. Kelly. I think Commerce started NASA, right? So there
you go.
I would say what we're doing with artificial intelligence
is also a good roadmap, right? It's a very cross-cutting
technology. Sometimes it can be used to make a drug, sometimes
it can be used to make new food. It's going to hit all these
different places, but some central goals there are important.
Senator Gardner. And you would all agree, and this is yes
or no, you would all agree with additional funding through the
National Science Foundation, yes?
Dr. Kelly. Yes, particularly for some--I think these types
of things where we can tap our natural resources, you know,
like a U.S. genome survey kind of version, like the U.S.
Geological Survey, I think, is a big idea like that or a moon
shot would help.
Senator Gardner. Mr. Gammack.
Mr. Gammack. Yes, in complete agreement.
Senator Gardner. Dr. Palmer.
Dr. Palmer. Yes.
Senator Gardner. Thank you very much.
One last question and then I'll give it back to Senator
Baldwin. Could you talk a little bit about the role that--the
concern that I have with China and what we could see happening
when technology may be used for a nefarious purpose. How should
we protect both the human rights aspect of this technology? How
do we make sure we're protecting and ensuring this technology?
The example I used at the beginning of the hearing, how do
we make sure that these technologies and programs are being
used for purposes that are respectful of human rights and human
dignity? Dr. Palmer, Mr. Gammack?
Dr. Palmer. Foremost we need to set an example. We need to
develop these technologies and we need to use them here in ways
that really are representative of the public interest and show
the ways in which we can balance innovation and security. Then
we need to make sure that we are sharing those norms and
values.
Think the way we do it is in many ways through training,
through bringing people here to discuss and learn how to use
this technology. Even then, it's not just going to be the
technology itself; it's going to be the way we develop our
international norms and partnerships and values. There are many
different aspects of this here. Again, it comes down to these
types of policy and strategy and security questions needing a
home as well. They need a home in which we can look at them and
keep looking at them over time because that balance will
change.
Senator Gardner. Very good. Mr. Gammack.
Mr. Gammack. Again, so in violent agreement with Dr.
Palmer.
I think it's important that we set a global standard
through our leadership and technology. I think it's also
important that we engage diverse communities with that
technology, diverse communities outside of our borders as well
as inside our borders.
I will say that I touched on earlier the desire and need
for us to really have a solid data strategy and ensuring that
critical data stays in the United States. It doesn't leave the
United States and developing those data assets that can be
leveraged by researchers and companies across the country.
Senator Gardner. Do you think--I mean, does that bring up
the issue of export control? Do we need export control in some
of these areas?
Mr. Gammack. I think a logical approach is important. I
think we need to look at how technologies are being applied.
Dr. Palmer just wrote a paper on dual use technologies, which I
think is a great primer on how we should look at this.
Senator Gardner. Dr. Kelly.
Dr. Kelly. Just to be blunt, I think we should be careful,
and thank you for the excellent question. What we have in 5G
now with Huawei is not a place we want to get into with
programming life, right?
You know, we need to make sure that, you know, we benefited
from the fact that we had intel. You know, we had Facebook. We
had Google. Yes, China could carve out and have their own
Internet for themselves. You can always check out, but the rest
of the world ran on our systems, Microsoft, you know, Windows,
right, like we benefited.
This is far more strategic technology than computers and,
you know, BGI is just announcing last week that they're reading
DNA cheaper than now Illumina is in San Diego, which is sort of
our flagship sequencing company. So, you know, I do think we're
in the midst of a race here.
Senator Gardner. Dr. Palmer.
Dr. Palmer. I just want to urge caution that we have to be
very careful in our choices about data collection and sharing
and security. It is not a trivial question of how to accomplish
the right balance. If we close down data, we are going to lose
on the foundational science that we need in order to build
these industries.
The interfaces between public datasets and public
repositories and all of our academic centers and industries are
just as important as the data itself. This, again, comes to a
need to invest in policy, scholarship, and strategy to look at
an analysis of these types of governance choices before we rush
too quickly ahead and enact things that can hinder us in the
long run.
Senator Gardner. Thank you.
Senator Baldwin.
Senator Baldwin. I have one final question, also.
So transitioning promising research into commercial
applications is always a challenge. We've had many policy
discussions and enacted legislation to help researchers bridge
what we call the ``valley of death.''
I wonder if you can provide examples of what has worked
well to foster commercialization of research and also identify
top challenges, you see in the effort to improve tech transfer
of bio-based products.
I'm going to start with you, Dr. Donohue, but I'd love to
hear the perspective of the full panel.
Dr. Donohue. Thank you, Senator. I think you know what I'm
going to probably say.
We at the University of Wisconsin have the benefits of
working with Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, called WARF.
They've been doing this for 95 years, and if the leadership of
WARF was here, he would say the way to be successful is to
place yourself at a top flight research institution, like UW-
Madison, bring in the best faculty in the world, and do it for
95 years and you will be successful.
But having said that, when the Great Lakes Bioenergy
Research Center was funded, WARF saw this as the single largest
grant on the UW-Madison Campus coming from a mission-driven
agency, DOE, and we were challenged to develop knowledge that
was going to help industry.
So we've worked very closely with them and we have the
ability to do that. There are researchers in other agencies we
would like to bring in to work with us who are now saying to
us, like USDA-ARS, we want to own all your IP and so when you
look at regulatory issues that's a problem, right, even within
different government agencies.
They are also saying in terms of data access, we would like
to review every paper with the right to hold on to it for an
indeterminate amount of time before the conclusions from that
work get released. I don't think that's a good idea either.
We need to understand the balance of what gets out and what
doesn't, but we need to make knowledge from taxpayer-funded
research available to the community or else the community,
academics and industry, doesn't have the ability to work with
it.
Dr. Palmer. I spent about 5 years within a National Science
Foundation Engineering Research Center, the largest pot of
money given out by the NSF. These are 10-year projects with
multimillion dollar-per-year investments. By the end of that 10
years, we ended up with more than 40 labs across the country
and more than 40 companies that were members. That type of
precompetitive environment was able to spin off many companies,
including Ginkgo. These places for knowledge brokering and
knowledge transfer, places to understand research trajectories
and take high-risk/high-reward, field-building exercises are
going to be really critical.
Certainly, there are pain points. How do we develop the
intellectual property frameworks that will enable different
types of licensing arrangements? Also, it was important to have
this social and policy research coupled to the technology so we
could develop technology and policy approaches that anticipate
regulatory reforms that may be needed or gaps in current
regulations.
These multidisciplinary centers that allow companies and
academics to work in precompetitive spaces are going to be
critical.
Mr. Gammack. So I am here because of the University of
Colorado-Boulder. So a brilliant scientist at the University of
Colorado had a tremendous idea on how to enable genome
engineering at scale and started Inscripta and so for us, the
relationship with the University of Colorado is incredibly
important. It's been a tremendous relationship, both from a
licensing perspective but also helping us understand the edges
of the technology and continuing to work with us and iterate.
Important to us, as well, is the availability and access to
capital and we've been very fortunate here at Inscripta in that
4 years, we've raised $300-ish million in those 4 years to be
able to develop our technology and bring this technology to
market.
The other area that's critically important is ensuring that
our consumers have the ability to acquire, use, and leverage
the technology. So ensuring that the grants are funded through
NSF, NIH, and various granting agencies is critically important
for us, as well.
Dr. Kelly. Thank you, Senator Baldwin. I will say I know
you have been a strong supporter of UW-Madison and they are
absolutely one of the centers for synthetic biology and so, you
know, appreciate you stepping forward to do that.
What I would say, I think Ginkgo is absolutely a recipient
of this. The first $5 to $10 million into the company was from
DARPA, NSF, SBIR, ARPA-E, and then since then we've raised $800
million in private capital because it helped us bridge that
valley of death.
I think there's an enormous opportunity for the government
to play a role here because I interact with Silicon Valley
venture capital quite a lot. We were the first life science
company to do Y Combinator, which is like Dropbox and Airbnb,
all these tech companies. And what is missing in our ecosystem
is the ability on the venture side privately to evaluate
emerging high technologies, it's just not there. How are you
supposed to do it? You've got to be a material science expert
and a genetics expert, but the government has this because they
have experts to approve grants. So they can provide a technical
filter on these companies, give them some money, say, ``your
technology's not garbage. I just had some serious people look
at it, go on your merry way'', Then they can prove out in the
market, the commercial side, and then the private capital's
there to show up after that, but it's that initial technical
filter. I think you could grow the SBIR Program a factor of a
hundred and it would pay off for this country in a heartbeat.
So I do think there's an opportunity where the government
could do that for the private industry. They don't have the
capability.
Senator Gardner. Thank you. I just have two quick questions
and then we'll close the hearing.
Thank you, Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
Mr. Gammack, you talked a little bit about getting access
to information and the data that you're looking for. You talk
about democratizing access to the biological world. What does
that democratized access to the biological world mean to you,
to Inscripta?
Mr. Gammack. Yes, it's a great question, Senator Gardner.
Thank you for asking.
So, you know, for us, I don't like to use Apple analogies
because a lot of people use Apple analogies, but it's a great
company to foundation for analogies.
The tool that we're creating and the tools that we create
are similar to how we should think about an iPad 10 years ago.
I mean, today, you don't walk into a coffee shop without
signing your finger on an iPad to pay for your cup of coffee. I
guarantee you 10 years ago at Cupertino, they never debated
should we build an iPad because it's going to become the point
of sale device at every coffee shop. They created an iPad
because they had certain apps in mind.
So for us, what developed that massive IT information
economy was the creation of platforms that others could plug
into and create very, very high-value apps. So we look at
Inscripta similarly where we want to create a high-value
platform that scientists smarter than those in Boulder can plug
in to and really leverage biology.
You know, if we can only access biology through a few
centers, we're not going to have the same iterative cycles of
advancement that we saw in IT. So the need to invest in tool
creation--right now, we're still stuck in local minimums. We
know what we know and we can investigate what we know, but we
need to create tools that allow us to explore the entire genome
in a non-biased way and that's the only way we'll truly really
be able to understand those fundamental building blocks.
So for us, scientists gaining access to core technologies
that allow them to interrogate not a single question but
thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of
questions at a time is going to be important and that's been
our focus and so we talk about democratization.
It's about providing those tools to the trained scientists
so they can really allow their minds to expand and leverage the
full power of biology.
Senator Gardner. Very good. Anybody else want to add to
that? Dr. Kelly.
Dr. Kelly. I want to add one quick thing. You know, I think
if you look back at computers, say, in the 1950s and 1960s, you
maybe had 10,000-20,000 people who programmed computers. It was
the sort of high art and impossible, right?
I was sitting down with Marc Andreessen, the fellow that
launched Netscape, and he said ``there are like tens of
millions of people now who have programmed computers.'' My 7-
year-old daughter Quinn, she programs on the iPad, right, you
know, and so that's where this is going to go, right? If the
technology really gets cheaper and easier every year to program
cells, everyone's going to want to do this. Gardeners are going
to want to--you know, it's just going to be a thing that is
like as easy as programming a computer today and I think
companies like Inscripta are going to lead the way on that
democratization.
Dr. Donohue. And so I'll just make one other point from
history and from today.
So my first year in graduate school, people had figured out
how to clone viral genes and put them in bacterial plasmids, I
heard about this in courses, and it was pretty cool, right, and
that was a chance event built by molecular biology. It was also
an event that had all sorts of ethical as well as scientific
issues. This country and its scientists stepped up and led a
global conversation on how we were going to do the next
experiments responsibly.
We have a company here today that's built on CRISPR. That
was a chance encounter five or seven years ago, some of it in
academic, some of it in industry, because fermentations were
going south.
Big instruments, big science coordinated is important, but
don't lose sight of the fact that the next greatest advance
might come from the single investigator-funded grant or a 14-
year-old riding a skateboard somewhere who's brighter who will
grow up to be brighter than any of us at this table. This
individual creativity needs to be part of the conversation
moving forward.
Senator Gardner. Thank you. Dr. Palmer, we talked a little
bit about the export issues, security issues, those kinds of
things.
When you're working with a company, how do you understand
the aims of the company that you are working with that may be
coming to you asking for a biologic solution? Are you looking
at the background of that company? Are you looking at their
funding stream? Are you looking at their board to fully
understand who controls the entity?
As we look at the importance of this technology, I mean,
how do you make those kind of determinations?
Dr. Palmer. It's all of the above as well as the overall
ecosystem that they're working with. There are a lot of
different incentive structures, a lot of different motivations
within any firm. They have interfaces with many other firms and
so it's really holistically looking at many of these questions.
What's fascinating about this space is I see so many companies
that are really invested in trying to do the right thing and
anticipating these types of governance challenges.
Ginkgo and Inscripta are just two examples. The key here is
to provide the space and the infrastructure to allow those
companies to work together to come up with the standards, then
to reinforce those through government actions and government
support. We've seen precedent of this in areas like the DNA
synthesis industry. We're seeing interest in it in other types
of industries as well and we need to continue to foster this.
Senator Gardner. Very good. I appreciate that, and thank
you so much for this hearing today.
I'm going to go ahead and close the hearing. The hearing
record will remain open for two weeks. During this time, the
Senators are asked to submit questions for the record. Upon
receipt, the witnesses are requested to submit their written
questions to the Committee as soon as possible but by no later
than Tuesday, the 31st of 2020. So let's just say two weeks.
All right? Two weeks.
I will conclude the hearing and thank the witnesses. Thank
you very much for your service today. for your testimony. and
for taking the time to be with us today and appreciate it.
Thank you very much. We'll now adjourn the hearing. Thank
you.
[Whereupon, at 10:34 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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