Nitrogen Fixation with Dr. Michael Miille - ISOS S1 #6

In Search of Soil

With how far science has come, we’re still at odds in the face of finding the holy grail of agricultural research: finding nitrogen-fixing bacteria that affiliate with non-legumes. The search has been going on for 50 years with no luck.

And this is where synthetic biology comes in. Synthetic biology strives to engineer beneficial microbes to give growers the same, or better, optimized solutions that traits and chemicals do.

So if we can’t find a naturally occurring nitrogen-fixing bacteria to associate with non-legumes, why not engineer one? In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Michael Miille, the CEO of Joyn Bio to tell us a little bit about the sci-fi-esque venture of engineering bacteria.

More on Joyn Bio: https://joynbio.com/

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In this episode of In Search of Soil

• What Joyn Bio is setting out to do (02:15)
• How difficult or doable is Joyn Bio’s core mission? (03:26)
  • Can you find host microbes that will colonize the plant? (04:35)
  • Registration and customer acceptance (05:50)
  • Bayer, Gingko, and risks (07:05)
• An analogy of an engineered microbe (07:40)
• Non-robust knowledge base vs. plain difficulty in starting (10:08)
  • Breaking down the complexity with the help of sequencing and genomic tools (11:43)
• The pathways to approach the nitrogen-fixing bacteria: seed treatment (13:18)
  • Microbes and plants in symbiosis (16:01)
  • Instead of fertilizer, nitrogen-fixing microbes in the second half of a corn’s life cycle (17:15)
• On top of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, does the corn need to be modified? (18:34)
• Why did some plants evolve not to have a symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria? (20:36)
  • Some crops weren’t given the opportunity to evolve (22:30)
• A microbe that associates, colonizes, and 100% replaces the external fertilization needs of the corn plant (23:38)
• Thoughts of ramping up an existing legume’s nitrogen fixation (25:08)
• Is there any worry that the synthetic microbes could upset the current soil microbiome? (28:58)
• The desired outcome of microbe colonization (31:42)
• Needing microbes to ignore negative feedback (35:17)
• Communication between the corn plant and the soy plant (36:35)
• What would bring the corn and the microbe to come together (37:52)
  • Isolating corn microbes in different geographies (39:24)
• The challenge of making microbes robust to thrive in the wild (40:32)
  • Consistency in performance (42:06)
  • Why engineer microbes in the first place? (44:02)
• Engineering and ensuring good, consistent performance (46:47)
• Are there microbe products being used in the market? (48:28)
• The efficacy of the Votivo seed treatment compared to nitrogen fertilizer (50:55)
  • The benefit hast to be big (52:18)
• For the anti-engineering-minded, what part of the picture are they not seeing? (53:32)
  • Random genetic mutations vs. controlled mutations (54:46)
• The general fear around new solutions comes from what is unknown to them (57:40)
  • Environmental sustainability and economic sustainability (59:22)
• How synthetic biology fits in, compares to, and contrasts with GMO technology and Crispr-Cas (01:02:08)
• Have we maxed out the potential of chemical solutions? (01:06:06)
• Why choose to focus on corn? Is corn the lead domino in this field? (01:10:55)
• If corn has been done, would that make it a little easier to do other crops? (01:12:30)
  • A separate chassis-searching program (01:13:30)
• The possibility of an association between a non-leguminous plant and a nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the wild (01:16:04)
• It can really be anything in the next 50 years (01:20:26)
• What the funnel for looking for chassis looks like (01:23:12)
• Everybody knows how to work with E. coli and yeast (01:25:28)
• The factor to fight against when making a legume associate with corn (01:26:24)
• The communication and signaling between plant and microbe (01:27:28)
• How far out are we from the corn-associated nitrogen-fixing bacteria that survives in the field? (01:33:25)
• Approaching from a business perspective: how it is looking at a project that would take a decade (01:37:35)
• What Mike Miille wants growers and farmers to know (01:42:10)