Bayer And Ginkgo Bioworks Unveil Joint Venture, Joyn Bio

Germany’s Bayer and American biotech firm, Ginkgo Bioworks, have announced the official name of its joint venture, Joyn Bio.

Bayer and Ginkgo founded Joyn Bio in September 2017 and have since established research operations in Boston, Massachusetts (USA) and opened additional facilities in West Sacramento, California (USA).

Joyn Bio was founded with the goal of bringing advanced techniques in synthetic biology to agriculture to support the industry’s sustainability efforts, starting with reducing the environmental impact of nitrogen fertiliser.

Nitrogen fixing

The plant microbiome living in roots and soil is vital to global farming practices, as it provides nutrients to plants, protects them from pests, and aids them in difficult environmental conditions. Joyn Bio’s first effort in this arena is focused on improving microbes’ ability to provide cereal crops their nitrogen requirements, offering major benefits for sustainable agriculture by reducing the need for additional chemical fertilisers.

“Nitrogen fertiliser is a key component in modern agriculture, but is costly, damaging to the environment and challenging to dose precisely. We are committed to bringing innovations to the agriculture industry that give growers a smarter and more sustainable way to grow our food,” said Mr. Johan Kers, Head of Nitrogen Fixation, Joyn Bio.

While nitrogen fixation is Joyn Bio’s first focus area, the company is exploring other disruptive applications of synthetic biology in the agriculture industry.

The name Joyn Bio references the partnering of the two parent companies, as well as the natural symbiosis between plants and microbes, which is the foundation of the company’s mission. In addition to the initial $100-mn Series A investment by Bayer, Ginkgo, and Viking Global Investors LP, Ginkgo is providing access to its organism design technology, laboratory, and office spaces, as well as outfitting a new facility specifically for Joyn Bio.

Bayer is providing exclusive access to its own archive of microbial strains and the necessary development intelligence for the application of microbes onto seeds in agriculture.

The Joyn Bio team is currently characterising Bayer’s extensive library of more than 100,000 proprietary microbial strains using the high-throughput advanced analytics of Ginkgo’s foundries.

“The unprecedented scale of biological data generated using the sophisticated foundry tools is enabling Joyn Bio to identify the strains and characteristics necessary to further develop nitrogen fixing bacteria for sustainable agriculture,” the companies said.

Joyn Bio is the 5th investment of Leaps by Bayer, a unit of Bayer investing in the solutions to some of today’s biggest problems. Previous Leaps investments include Casebia (CRISPR/Cas technology) and BlueRock (induced pluripotent stem cell technology).

Infrastructure

Joyn Bio has recently entered into an agreement for approximately 20,000 square feet of laboratory and office space within Ginkgo’s Boston Seaport facility hosting up to 30 employees and forming the company headquarters.

Additional research efforts are performed at the West Sacramento facility, a global Bayer R&D site for microbial based solutions in agriculture with 160,000 sq ft, over 200 researchers, a state of the art pilot plant, and greenhouses.

Joyn Bio’s West Sacramento presence will initially be housed in the recently opened ‘CoLaborator’, which is Bayer’s new biotech startup lab space, dedicated to housing and fostering innovative ventures to transform modern agriculture.

To date, Joyn Bio has 10 employees split across the two sites and is actively recruiting for scientific positions related to synthetic biology, plant-microbe interactions, and soil ecosystems. Joyn Bio will have its own scientific leader-ship and management team enabling the company to run as an independent and sustainable organisation.