A co-created newsletter of resources and actions for climate biotech
Hello Climate Biotech Friends!
It’s that energetic time of year when the stores in the US are shifting from selling pencils to pumpkins. We hope this reaches you in high spirits as you take the first steps into autumn.
We’re excited to announce support from Schmidt Futures, Grantham Foundation and Nathan Cummings Foundation.
Towards Homeworld Collective’s non-profit mission of growing the field of climate biotech, we have exciting news:
- We have announced our $1M Garden Grants, a first-in-kind grantmaking program for ambitious, early-stage efforts in climate biotech. This first call is scoped on translational protein engineering. We’re partnering with Experiment.com to create a public space for sharing good problems while also establishing a confidential channel for discussing your specific solution. Deadline October 20th. Learn more and start your application here.
- We’ve introduced the Homeworld Problem Statement Repository for this Garden Grants round, a collection of problem statements that are written and refined by the climate biotech community. Each problem statement describes a granular set of project goals achievable by one person or a small team and explains their significance in the context of a big picture challenge.
- We’ve written our newest blog post by Paul Reginato about why we scoped Garden Grants Call 1 on protein engineering and introducing the Problem Statement Repository.
- We’ve extended the deadline of our $10k writing challenge to October 15th with additional $2.5k of prizes from our friends at PillarVC. The goal is to encourage you to practice the skill of writing and envisioning how biology can create a positive future. Start your application here.
Jobs, Funding, & Opportunities
Funding ($ looking for projects)
- Homeworld Garden Grants ($20k-$200k), Deadline October 20th
- DoE has a new FOA for algal CO2 capture, up to $1M funding with 20% cost share (h/t Hanny Rivera)
- Biden-Harris Administration Announces Up To $1.2 Billion For Nation’s First Direct Air Capture Demonstrations in Texas and Louisiana
Opportunities
- The Protein Engineering Tournament: An Open Science Benchmark for Protein Modeling and Design (Arxiv) (h/t the Align To Innovate Team)
- Call for research: Current Status and Future of Biotechnology for Carbon Capture, Storage, and Negative Emissions
Job postings
- Associate in Enhanced Rock Weathering Job Posting for Cascade
- Vice President of Downstream Process Development at Bluestem Biosciences, Inc.
- Field Site Pilot Plant Engineer & Field Site Microalgal Specialist at Remedi!ate
- Bioprocess Development and Scale-Up Lead at EVERY
- CowBell Labs‘ mission is to make agriculture methane measurement affordable and accessible. It is hiring leads for scientific computation, field micrometeorology experiments, and partnerships. Email info@cowbell-labs.org
Research & News
Technical Resources
- Underground Garden Club – In creator Mark Hansen’s words, he’s working to build a “Duolingo for the physical sciences”
- Engineering Strategies to Boost Crop Productivity by Cutting Respiratory Carbon Loss – (h/t Chris Eiben)
- Global warming increases the chance of success of maize-wheat double cropping in Europe. (h/t Jonathan Burbaum)
- Running the numbers on plant synthetic biology solutions to global problems (h/t Arjun Khakar)
- Direct Biocatalytic Processes for CO2 Capture as a Green Tool to Produce Value-Added Chemicals (Molecules 2023)
- Preprint in Progress in Vibrio Natriegens as a future workhorse chassis organism (Buz Barstow’s LinkedIn post)
- Electricity Driving Life: Using a metabolic pathway, energy-rich resources can be produced via the power of electricity (h/t Pooya Naghshbandi and David Kim)
- Atmospheric methane: Comparison Between Methhae’s record in 2006-2022 (h/t Paige Brocidiacono). For those interested in methane, Spark has a good primer on Atmospheric methane removal).
- Unlocking secrets of microbial ecotoxicology: recent achievements and future challenges (FEMS Microbiology Ecology, h/t Hanny Rivera)
- Multi-micron crisscross structures grown from DNA-origami slat (Nature Nanotech, h/t Chris Wintersinger)
- Effect of Asparagopsis extract in a canola oil carrier for long-fed Wagyu cattle
- Merging enzymatic and synthetic chemistry with computational synthesis planning (Nature Communications, h/t Sam Goldman)
Blog posts & podcasts
- Sphinx Bio Folding Playground: A one-stop website for comparing protein folding models like AlphaFold2, ESMFold, OmegaFold (h’t Nicholas Larus Stone)
- Who are the government funders of climate biotech? Homeworld’s Analysis of 350,000 government biotech grants.
- “I should have loved biology” by James Somers (h/t Niko McCarty)
- Australian trial of seaweed cow feed fails to achieve hoped-for methane cuts (h/t Ernie Chow)
- Proteins are where the action is. The repository is where the problems are by Paul Reginato.
- Explore biomimicry with Jane Benyus, the originator of the term.
Inspiration – Motivation through art and beauty
- Kiss the Ground (image below) documentary showing how agricultural practice can get plants working with soil microorganisms to promote carbon sequestration (h/t Ariana Caiati)
- “Should AI Help Visualize the Future of the Climate Crisis” (Atmos). Beautiful imagery posing interesting questions about discourse (h/t Elliot Roth)
- “Dear Alice” solarpunk commercial by The Line. There is also a decommodified version here (h/t Elliot Roth)
We believe in the power of our community, and our newsletter aims to showcase this. So many people are doing amazing work towards climate, sustainability, and planetary health. Thank you to everyone who submitted the ideas and inspirations which created this issue.
If you have any feedback, insight, or just want to say hello, please connect with us!
hello@homeworld.bio
@HomeworldBio
By The Homeworld Team