A co-created newsletter of resources and actions for climate biotech
Hello Climate Biotech Friends!
2023 has been quite a year: We at Homeworld Collective wish you (and your families) health and growth in 2024. We are certainly excited to keep growing with you.
This Fall, Homeworld launched three programs, and we can give some updates here:
- The Ideas Writing Challenge: Read our blog post announcing the six winners and two honorable mentions out of 150 submissions. We share our favorite parts and our general feedback for what makes great writing.
- The Homeworld Garden Grants: We are completing the grant agreement processes now and will announce the grantees in January!
- The Ideas Matter Fellowship: Out of 500+ submissions, we are thrilled to announce our inaugural set of fellows! (image below)
It’s been a big year in many ways. As we navigate the turbulence and challenges ahead toward a brighter future, may we do so collaboratively and collectively. Homeworld is working hard to provide new offerings and services to the community in 2024, and we are always open for input+feedback for how we can help! Reach out anytime at hello@homeworld.bio
Lastly, below is the first person view from Co-founder Dan Goodwin’s perspective when he gave the keynote panel talk to the American Society for Cell Biology conference in 2023. Over 2000 biologists all engaged with learning more about how they can engage with climate challenges.
With love and action-oriented optimism,
The Homeworld Team
Jobs, Funding, & Opportunities
Funding ($ looking for projects)
- $7.5 million in federal funding (DOE BETO) to help communities conduct initial feasibility analyses and/or support the initial generation of validation data for potential waste-to-fuels solutions (h/t Sean Sullivan)
- Global Methane Hub announces the Enteric Fermentation Research & Development Accelerator, a $200M agricultural methane mitigation funding initiative (h/t Madeline Luck)
- DOE announces $10 million to support next generation of energy innovators
- Spark Climate Solutions announces a funding opportunity for exploratory research for atmospheric methane research. Grants up to $300,000 USD with a period of performance of up to 2 years (h/t Paige Brocidiacono)
Opportunities
- Dorian Leger is looking for folks to interview with experience working with externals for TEAs and LCAs for his research (h/t Dorian Leger)
Job postings
- ARPA-E is hiring fellows on a rolling basis, and is also regularly looking for Program Directors for more senior applicants (h/t Ben Weiner)
- Centeon is looking to hire three roles (Bioelectrochemist, Electrochemical Systems Engineer, Microbiologist/Strain Engineer) and also hearing from junior candidates in engineering, business, and product). (h/t Jerome Unidad)
- LabStart is actively recruiting a diverse cohort of entrepreneurs for a paid, year-long fellowship. $100k over 2024, more info in thread.
- Bionformatician role at Funga (h/t Paige Borciadiacono)
- Huminly is hiring for an enzyme scientist role and a process engineer role to support training biology to recycle the unrecyclable, starting with the plastic in textiles (h/t Nicholas Sarai)
- Prometheus Materials is hiring a Computational Materials Scientist
- Many roles posted for Gigascale Capital portfolio companies.
- Roles in operations, policy, and programs at Cascade Climate.
Research & News
Innovations and Developments
- Comprehensive overview of Bottom-up Proteomics with Mass Spec
- Future House’s WikiCrow – automating synthesis of human scientific knowledge. High expectations for this team and their tools!
- Proof of concept for single protein nanopore sequencing (h/t Chloe Hsu)
- Engineering artificial photosynthesis based on rhodopsin for CO2 fixation (h/t Shahar Bracha)
- Protocol paper on a colorimetric assay for measuring CA activity
- Oxygen-tolerant reductive glycine pathway assimilates methanol, formate and CO2 in the yeast Komagataella phaffii
- Paper describing a two stage bioreactor system using M. thermoacetica for CO/CO2 fixation + Y. lipolytica for lipid production (h/t Andrew Stewart)
- A long-context language model for the generation of bacteriophage genomes
- PaperMage: toolkit for parsing papers and PDFs with accompanying github code (h/t Ariane Mora)
- 2024 Nucleic Acids Resarch Database issue and molecular biology database collection (NAR, h/t Nikos Kyrpiedes)
Climate Impact Studies
- Hidden comet-tails of marine snow impede ocean-based carbon sequestration (link)
- A Review of measurement for quantification of carbon dioxide removal by enhanced weathering in soil (h/t Loren Looger)
- National assessment of carbon removal in the US: Roads to Removal funded by DOE
- Big CDR roadmap from RMI, covering 32 different pathways.
- Cascade Climate launches Community Quantification Standard for ERW (h/t Dai Ellis)
- Marine Fungi are a very cool, and possibly under-appreciated, area of study in biotech (Curr Biology, h/t Amy Gladfelter).
- This discussion of the strong relevance of microbiology to climate impact calls voices for microbiology in policy (h/t Lisa Stein)
- Nice description of the opportunity for CDR via mineral weathering by microbes in reactors, by Vesta, Silver Lab, JCVI, and Kenneth Nealson. The focus is preventing and dissolving iron oxide layers that can passivate silicate mineral dissolution.
- Material pathways of biologically sequestered carbon (h/t Jesse Zondervan)
Research Advances and Methodologies
- Mechanism for single odorant receptor expression (h/t Anubhav Sinha)
- Again Bio is scaling up M. thermoacetica for acetate production from carbon dioxide (h/t Andrew Stewart)
- Dataset for climate related research (combined dataset of 36 models) specifically for machine learning (h/t Ariane Mora)
- Paper illuminating soil organic matter’s “Reactive Mineral Sink” (h/t Madeleine Luck)
Blog posts
- Erika DeBenedictis’s guide on how to start a non-profit and the accompanying living document as a resource.
- Living Carbon’s blog post about pilot studies with sporopollenin, with most lessons being along TEA lines rather than biological research (h/t Max Schubert)
- What Biology Can Learn from Physics: Erika DeBenedictis blog post about science in the age of AI x Bio (h/t Pete Kelly)
- Google DeepMind blog post on their new method called FunSearch that searches for “functions” written in computer code using LLMs (h/t Shahar Bracha)
Inspiration – Motivation through art and beauty
- “Poetry and language offer a balm for climate angst” (h/t Douglas Guilbeault)
- Beautiful review of Synthetic Biology’s potential role in Climate Change, written for the general public — from UK’s NESTA (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts) (h/t AJP)
- “Standards make the world” by David Lang
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