Much of agriculture depends upon synthetic fertilizer. But the production of that fertilizer is responsible for 3% of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why innovators in the emerging field of synthetic biology are attempting to disrupt the status quo in agriculture and engineer new ways for growers to achieve the same yields with less fertilizer—and less environmental impact.
Mike Miille is the CEO of Joyn Bio, a biotech company that is using synthetic biology to try to make agriculture more sustainable. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Mike joins Ross and Rebekah to explain how his team is engineering microbes to address unmet needs in agriculture and what differentiates synthetic biology from classical breeding or GMOs.
Mike introduces us to Joyn Bio’s work in designing nitrogen-fixing corn (the potential holy grail), responding to the argument that our system of monoculture isn’t worth saving and the concerns around scaling innovations in synthetic biology. Listen in to understand how Mike thinks about the unknowns of designing new organisms and learn about the other potentially game-changing advancements in ag that Mike’s team is working on right now.
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Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. I am Nori’s creative editor. I am joined by my co-host for this episode, her first time co-hosting, Rebecca Carlson, Nori’s agriculture supply lead. Hi, Rebecca.
Rebekah Carlson: Hey, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, well, we had you on to talk about how Nori’s supply side works recently. And this episode came up and I thought I wanted to tag you in on it because your expertise is much more related than any expertise I possess is not related to this. So I’m happy to have you on with me today, Rebecca.
Rebekah Carlson: As always, happy to be here. Love talking science and ag.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s a common theme around here. And we are joined by Mike Milley of JoinBio. Mike is JoinBio CEO. Hey, Mike.
Mike Miille: Hi, Ross. Happy to be here.
Ross Kenyon: We’re happy to have you. We originally started thinking about this show because we are interested in synthetic biology. And I imagine for someone listening, that is not a pairing of words they have come across yet. I think it’s still something that is a bit farther out on the frontiers for the layperson. Could you give us a nice introduction to the field and what you’re trying to achieve?
Mike Miille: Sure. So JOIN is a joint venture that was a combined buyer, one of the leaders in agriculture, with Ginkgo Bioworks, who is one of the leaders in synthetic biology and With the purpose of applying the advances and technologies that have been growing on the synthetic biology side with the microbial and ag expertise that Bayer has, with the ultimate goal being to engineer microbes that for very specific targets and unmet needs in agriculture. And this represented an innovative move on the part of Bayer to look at the synthetic biology field and Just try to decide or try to come up with ways to apply it to the innovation and unmet needs that agriculture is faced with.
And so by teaming up with Ginkgo Bioworks, it allowed JOIN to tap into the What ginkgo has built up over the last eight years. And this is what’s now called synthetic biology. It’s also called industrial biotech. But it basically is starting with microbes and fermentation and the belief that you can engineer a Better than or in let’s say in comparison to synthetic chemistry. And so you’re actually programming these microbes to produce specific products or Or to produce specific outcomes in a fermentation tank as an alternative to traditional chemistries that are used out there.
And this has really exploded over the last 5 to 10 years. As the cost of sequencing a genome has dropped dramatically, the high throughput instrumentation and technology has advanced, and we’re now able to go in and sequence and edit and understand these microbes at the genetic level, at the DNA level. And so ultimately what Ginkgo is doing or what they were based on is taking the programming That originated with computers where you’re programming with zeros and ones and simply saying, okay, we’re going to apply that approach to biology, to the DNA, to the bases in DNA, the four bases, and we’re going to look at programming.
Microbes the same way you would program a computer. And that was 10 years ago when Tom Knight and the MIT team that he brought out founded Ginkgo. And they’ve built it up now over these last eight years into... And doing it in a way that is both beneficial and cost effective relative to the alternatives.
Ross Kenyon: When you say that you’re engineering a microbe, is this a microbe that has never before in the history of Earth existed in terms of a species or as a distinct organism? Is that what you mean to say?
Mike Miille: No, and that’s actually where the term synthetic biology is a little misleading. What we’re actually doing is taking natural microbes, in many cases beneficial or natural microbes, and making very specific engineering Changes to them in very specific pathways or in very specific genes to optimize them for a specific purpose. So that chassis or that microbe, most of it is in fact, it starts with what nature has already given us. It’s a natural microbe and we’re just using the tools of synthetic biology to program it or optimize it for very specific purposes.
Ross Kenyon: I remember seeing experiments. I think I saw this originally in Carl Sagan’s Cosmos where they were trying to do a lab produced abiogenesis of just combining like amino acids and trying to have organisms emerge out of the primordial soup. So you’re a little bit farther downstream than that.
Mike Miille: Our starting point, Ginkgo and all the other major players in synthetic biology today that are using it for industrial applications or industrial purposes, they all start with natural microbes that nature has already advanced over thousands and millions of years. Using these genetic tools that have been developed over the last 10 years, along with the sequencing, To be able to program or selectively engineer these microbes for very specific purposes.
Ross Kenyon: Is perhaps a better analogy for understanding this something like the microbes that you’re working with are the rootstocks and then you’re sort of grafting on new attributes genetically that you want these new combinations, this new type of life that you’ve combined to embody both the rootstock and the scion. Is that closer to it?
Mike Miille: It is. It’s really thinking about, in our case, think about that microbe as being a chassis. And then what we engineer into that chassis is like a cargo or a payload. And so the chassis becomes the delivery mechanism for that cargo. And so you’re still starting with this natural microbe as the chassis and then optimizing it with a cargo or a payload that you then deliver. In our case, you would deliver to the soil or you deliver to a plant.
Rebekah Carlson: Oh, this is so fascinating as we’re thinking about like science applied to, well, designing nature almost to our agricultural systems. And this isn’t the first time we’ve done such things, but as we’re thinking about synthetic biology and I had a definition, I heard a definition of it’s kind of like using bio as kind of a design problem. Basically, like how do we go around and design biology to what we need? And how would you explain the difference between like Synthetic biology, which is like, you know, new and sexy to a point with classical breeding and like GMOs and like the difference, how are applying those to agriculture?
Mike Miille: So a couple of things, I think that synthetic biology and what we’re talking about now, it’s very much designed, it’s being very specific about the engineering, very purposeful about the engineering that you’re doing. If you look at traditional plant breeding, there you’re doing crosses and you’re letting the plant itself sort of evolve. And evolve and grow with these changes. With transgenic or GMO plants, you’re actually taking those genes from, say, a microbe. And inserting them into the plant. So whether it’s putting a crytoxin or BT into a corn plant, or whether you’re putting in a gene that makes a soybean plant Roundup resistant, there you’re actually doing the editing or the gene introduction into the plant genome.
What we’re doing is quite a bit different, which is Taking advantage of the fact that there is a plant microbiome, that microbes play a crucial role in the soil and the plant and the rhizosphere and the health of that plant. And then simply editing or optimizing that microbe to deliver a cargo. So you’re not actually engineering the plant itself. But rather you’re engineering the microbe that’s then going to deliver the cargo or deliver, in our case, the nitrogen to that plant as a way of providing a new solution for a grower who’s out there trying to produce the soybean or the corn crop that they’re working on.
Rebekah Carlson: So what is Joint Bio doing within the space within corn and how are we making changes via microbial editing, I guess, to corn?
Mike Miille: When we launched Joint Bio, it was just about three years ago in October of 2017. Our flagship or our premier project that we wanted to focus on was trying to come up with a solution or an alternative to synthetic fertilizer. And I think one of the things that agriculture as a whole really needs to Focus on more than maybe they have historically is the environment and the environmental impact and reducing the environmental impact, negative environmental impact that agriculture as a whole has and the impact or the resulting impact in climate change and what’s happening there from a sustainability standpoint.
And so if you just take nitrogen fertilizer itself, on one hand, it’s absolutely critical. For the production of agriculture today, whether it’s in the US or even on a global basis. And it’s almost single-handedly responsible for the global population growth from the early 1900s to today. It tracks exactly with the use of nitrogen and the population growth. And we would not be able to feed the planet today without synthetic fertilizer. The problem is that The production of that fertilizer with the Haber-Bosch process results in close to 3% of the greenhouse gas emissions.
So it’s a very intense, fuel intense, energy intense process. You also have a great deal of runoff that results from the heavy use of the fertilizer around rivers in corn and cereal and the different crops there in the Midwest. You have tremendous amount of runoff that is also causing other environmental issues down in the Gulf from that. Everybody, it’s this dilemma. Everybody realizes that you have to have it. And at the same time, it’s not sustainable. And so what we’re doing is something people have been looking at for 30, 40, 50 years is trying to develop a microbe that will fix nitrogen from the air and transfer it to that corn plant.
Such that the grower can reduce the amount of synthetic fertilizer by 40 to 50 percent. And this would have a tremendous impact right out of the gate from a climate change and environmental sustainability standpoint. If you just could reduce that amount of synthetic fertilizer, cut it in half, that makes a huge difference from an environmental impact perspective. So our Our purpose or our objective is to find that microbe and be able to design it in such a way that it fixes the nitrogen and transfers it to that corn plant, allowing that grower to cut the use of the fertilizer by 40 or 50%, and the key part here, but have the same yield.
Positively impact their financial position, not negatively impact it, and at the same time, have a positive impact on the environment.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Although I had recently been looking at some of the plants that are recommended like autumn olive and then I had seen that autumn olive has become quite a pest in the Midwest and the East because a lot of these berry producing nitrogen fixing bushes are extremely hardy because they can grow in degraded soil and because they fix their own nitrogen they can just run hog wild basically and do whatever they want and outcompete native species. Is there a risk in your mind that corn becomes invasive in that same kind of way?
Mike Miille: No, I don’t think there is. I think the better analogy from a farming and an agriculture perspective is to look at soybeans. So soybeans have these ribosomal nodules. They have these microbes that are in these nodules in their roots that fix nitrogen. And so as a result, soybeans need little to no fertilizer. As a matter of fact, a lot of growers in the Midwest will actually rotate Soybeans with corn. And so when they plant the soybeans after a year of soybeans, the soil in many cases will actually have more nitrogen in it.
Then before it was planted. So it’s almost regenerative in a way. And people use other cover crops this way to try to, you know, in a regenerative way. And then the next year when you plant the corn, that nitrogen then is pulled out. It’s, you know, the corn will deplete the nitrogen in addition to the fertilizer that you’ve applied. But if you envision, if you imagine a corn plant that also has microbes, That are attached to the corn roots or the corn plant fixing that nitrogen, you would have the same benefit then.
You would reduce the amount of synthetic fertilizer, but that corn plant would have the nutrition that it needs.
Rebekah Carlson: And this is like, you know, the holy grail of agriculture, right? Having nitrogen fixing corn to reduce the reduction. Great for farmers because there’s less chemical dependence and like great for the environment, right? Because like you said, the impact of synthetic nitrogen on our entire world and like the carrying capacity of our world. Huge. And so we reduce that. And that’s an ultimate goal. And in this like geeking out mode, I’m like, very curious, can you explain a little bit of how your attempt to like harness these microbes like increase their productivity to, to actually like affect the entire corn plant repeatedly over soil types?
Mike Miille: I can. I think the first and most important thing is you have to find chassis or microbes that colonize that corn plant, that associate with the plant symbiotically and are able to exist through the lifecycle of that corn plant. The most valuable time to be able to provide the nitrogen to the corn plant is in the second half. And so if you have a microbe that lives with or colonizes that corn plant through that second half of its life cycle, that’s when that nitrogen is most valuable. So you need a microbe that colonizes the plant.
The second thing we need is it has to be able to fix the nitrogen. It has to have the pathway and the machinery inside of it that’s actually able to take nitrogen from the air and convert it into ammonia and then actually transfer it to the plant. And that process we can actually engineer to optimize it. So you’re looking to do both of these things, both colonize the plant, and fix the nitrogen from the air and transfer it to the corn plant. And all of that requires a special relationship, if you will, between that microbe and the corn plant.
This is that plant microbiome concept that this is all based on is that microbes do associate in a very positive way with plants that are out there and are a critical part of their growth and their health. We’re sort of at the early stages of understanding and learning about the human gut microbiome or the animal microbiome and how critical those are to gut health and human health. We’re at the same early stage of really understanding just how much microbes, both in the soil and associated with the plant, are impacting that plant and its health and its growth cycle.
Ross Kenyon: Rebecca, I’m curious what you think about our audience and how they might feel. I can imagine some of our audience thinking this is amazing. And then, Mike, I imagine some other portion of it might say, why don’t you just grow in a polyculture environment? Is this not just prolonging monoculture corn, a sea of corn for the Midwest? Which I think a lot of our listeners would argue that system isn’t worth saving. Yeah. But I can imagine other... Basically, our listeners would yell at each other, Mike. Maybe you can split the difference for them.
Mike Miille: Yeah, I think, again, I think the challenge for agriculture, if you look out over the next 10 or 20 years, is trying to do two things. Provide the food slash nutrition to the planet, to people from a food security and a nutrition perspective. And At the same time, do that in a sustainable and resilient way so that you’re able to do it in a consistent but environmentally sustainable way so that you’re not essentially destroying the environment in exchange for being able to provide people food. You’ve got to find that balance between providing the nutrition and providing the food With having solutions and having practices, agricultural practices as a whole that are long term and sustainable and ultimately environmentally friendly.
And I think this is where some of the, you know, the regenerative ag perspective is coming. And I do think I think. Really, where technology is going to play a role in this is in solving some of these issues. So whether it’s us with finding alternatives to synthetic fertilizer, whether we eventually maybe we find microbes that facilitate and enhance the carbon sequestration in the soil. I mean, there are a number of huge unmet needs directly related to sustainability and climate change and the environment that need to be part of the consideration and part of the innovation that comes with these agricultural applications and solutions without losing sight of the fact that Ultimately, we need farmers who have profitable businesses and we need farmers who are going to put the food that we all take for granted in a Costco, in a Walmart, in a grocery store.
They have to put that food there. And so you’re always trying to balance those two things, to create a sustainable environment and still be able to deliver food to people from a food security standpoint.
Rebekah Carlson: Yeah, absolutely. It’s really interesting to think about how we’re having like these new tools applied to agriculture, right? Synthetic biology is, we’re at the cusp of it, right? We’re so, there’s so much to understand, there’s so much to be applied to agriculture, but we don’t know it yet. And the last time we had such like a, such a powerful tool really applied to agriculture, I’m like drawing parallels to the green revolution, right? When synthetic chemistry was really applied at scale to agriculture. And so this idea of like bringing in Synthetic biology and applying it to a larger scale is like almost in turn could like create almost a second green revolution, right?
We’re actually harnessing biology, one of our most powerful tools in our own favor. But in parallel to the, you know, Norman Borlaug’s contributions of like the critics of it are like when this was applied, we didn’t necessarily... We didn’t foresee the long-term effects of the environmental side of things, of human rights side of things, of the reliance of farmers really on big ag for synthetic chemistry. And so I’m really curious to hear your perspective of how do you think synthetic biology and applying microbes at scale to agriculture, how it’ll actually change the landscape again in a different way.
What are some of the negative implications you see further down the line of having this at scale?
Mike Miille: First of all, I think it’s hard to anticipate or hard to know that far out or how these changes are going to play out. I think that anytime you’re bringing new innovation and you’re bringing new technologies to the market, You have to do two things. You have to look at what’s the benefit that you’re bringing. And I do believe that if those benefits are big enough, people will give that technology a chance. So if you’ve got a GMO papaya approach, if you’ve got an engineered papaya seed that saves the papaya crop in Hawaii nationally, People will adopt it even though they’re anti-GMO.
You’ll see the same thing with potatoes. You’ll see the same thing with the chestnut. They’re going to have to rescue the chestnut. If you provide a big enough benefit to people, whether it’s in agriculture, whether it’s in medicine, it doesn’t matter, people will be open to at least looking at that technology. But the second part of that is you also have an obligation to show that technology is safe. And by safe, obviously you look at it relative to people, you look at it relative to the environment, to insect world, to the bees, there’s all these different perspectives that you have to be able to test for and look at in anticipation.
And so To me, there’s both a showing the benefit and also doing everything you can to make sure that you are doing no harm or that there is no negative impact associated with what you’re doing. I think the fact That we’ve turned back to biology, that we’ve turned back to microbes and natural microbes that have been around for thousands and millions of years as a starting point. And as we understand, as we learn more about the microbiome and how all these things fit together, I think we’re going to find positives in all this and not negatives at this point.
But I also think, you know, like anything... There will be some things to watch out for. There will be some things that you do put regulations in around because not everything that’s innovative is guaranteed to be safe. Well, I think a lot of the hurdles and requirements that are in place today are important. I think you have to look at non-target species. You have to look at groundwater. You have to look at the impact potentially on climate change. You want to understand when you put something out there, How persistent is it?
You have to be able to show people, okay, what happens at the end of this growing season? What impact is that application or is that microbe having on other species or other microbes in And so, looking at this innovation and looking at these changes, You have to put yourself in the shoes of a consumer. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the grower. And you also have to put your shoes sort of in the shoes of the regulator, who also has the responsibility of making sure that the environment and the toxicology and stuff, that you have met the requirements and what you’re putting out there has passed, at this point, everything we know that’s required to be safe.
Ross Kenyon: Less on consequentialist grounds, do you either anticipate or currently see many bioethical objections to synthetic biology as a whole?
Mike Miille: I do. I think because of the history of how the GMO plant, the transgenic plant, GMO plant innovations, how they came into the market and the timing and the resistance and just the way... The whole GMO movement came about. I think it would be pretty naive to think that’s suddenly going to go away. I think anybody who works in biotech, anybody who works in synthetic biology, anybody who works in any kind of genomic or engineering capacity, I think you have to be very aware of the different perspectives out there. I think you have to be respectful of it.
And I think one of the things I’ve learned is that trying to use science as an explanation to a consumer or to an NGO group or something is really tough. You just get lost in it. What you really have to do is be able to talk about the benefits At a high level and make sure people understand why you’re doing it and what the benefit’s going to be. And then you have to be able to show at some level what you’ve done to ensure that it’s going to be safe. I think the synthetic biology world will continue to face some level of headwinds and resistance just because it’s new and people don’t fully understand it.
And there is a sort of a historical base from the GMO standpoint. That’s not going to just go away. And I also think it’s going to be geographical to a certain extent. I think the resistance and the attitudes towards this are clearly much stronger in Europe than they are, say, in the United States today. I think it would be, again, I think it would be naive to think that’s suddenly going to change in the next 10 or 20 years. So you have to go into these ventures. You have to go into these efforts to With a clear understanding that hurdle is going to be there and you’re going to have to deal with it.
Ross Kenyon: What else do you have in mind for synthetic biology in your professional life, Mike? Besides focusing on nitrogen fixing corn, which I agree with Rebecca, that sort of would be a kind of holy grail. So additionally, if there’s a second holy grail, what else might it be? What else is on the horizon for climate, agriculture, and synthetic biology?
Mike Miille: So if you look specifically, if we look specifically at agriculture, I think that in addition to nitrogen fixation, I think we’re fascinated with this concept of carbon sequestering and microbes playing a potential role in that and optimizing and engineering microbes that enhance that process. I think that’s an interesting one. We can also look at other nutrients like phosphate and such, all of which are about sort of providing nutrition to that plant We also have a number of programs going that are looking at both pest or insect control as well as disease issues to provide disease control or pest control to plants.
Again, as an alternative to a synthetic chemical or as an alternative to an engineered trait. So again, if you put yourself in the shoes of a grower out there, They’ve got a lot of adversity and a lot of uncertainty coming at them every year, whether it’s the weather, whether it’s regulatory changes, the changes in consumer demand. And more recently, I think one of the biggest things is just climate change. I mean, weather’s been a challenge for farmers for a long time. And right now, those changes, whether it’s amount of water, lack of water, abiotic stress, temperature, all these things are changing at a really rapid rate.
And if you’re a farmer, that’s tough because... The time it takes the industry to bring new solutions to the All technologies, and I think synthetic biology is one, to be leveraged to not only provide new solutions to these growers, but to also provide them faster. And I think that the vaccine race for the COVID is a great example where if you suddenly have to do something, How fast can you do it? And a traditional vaccine is what, five, seven, ten years. And people are going to try to do it in one to two because of the benefit and because of the need.
And I think the same thing is going to happen with agriculture, that those needs are going to be there and people are going to find ways to bring new solutions faster. And then if you step back outside of ag and say, well, Where else is synthetic biology going to play a role? It’s clearly going to play a role in pharma and biotech medicine. It’s clearly going to play a role in plant-based foods and food ingredients that’s already happening, specialty Antichemicals, fragrances. What synthetic biology is doing today is starting to grow and starting to learn all the different ways that technology can make existing businesses or existing markets better.
And it’s not going to solve every problem, but I do believe it’s going to find a growing contribution to a number of these businesses as a better alternative, as a more sustainable alternative to the current practices. And that’s what’s exciting about being in the synthetic biology field in world that Ginkgo’s in. And that’s for JOIN. That’s what’s so exciting to us is be able to take that technology and bring it to the agricultural community.
Ross Kenyon: I think it’s truly fascinating and I hope you don’t think that we’re picking on you asking too many hard questions, Mike. I hope that shows genuine intellectual engagement more than anything. One of the questions I have about this is we don’t understand microbiology super well in my understanding. I think not that many of the species in the microbiota have been even named. I think there’s a lot of unknowns, especially about interactions between them. So if you’re designing microbiology, I also will say as a caveat that if you take this complexity point that I’m making seriously, you would not be able to move because every action you take involves interacting with complex systems, the repercussions of which you will probably never know.
So don’t take it too seriously, but surely... Some of it must be taken seriously. So how should we do it?
Mike Miille: And scope of the microbial world, but also then, you know, all of the different aspects of interaction, interaction in the soil, interaction with a plant, interaction in our guts, another hormone. The whole world that I think is going to explode over the next five years is better understanding of microbes with skin, with our skin and skin care and the association of microbes with skin health. I mean, all of these things, we’re just learning. And I think if you just step back and look at it, it’s like, whoa. I mean, microbes are everywhere.
And you measure them in billions, right? I think a teaspoonful of soil has a billion microbes in it. I mean, it’s just the numbers and the complexity is just staggering. So trying to go from there to do we understand everything about every action we take? The answer is, of course not. I mean, we’re just way too early in that. And whether it’s using these technologies to optimize microbes Whether it’s for gut health in humans or gut health in animals, or whether it’s using these microbes to enhance plant health and plant production, we’re at a point where we probably are going to have not all of the actions and not all of the things we do, we’re going to understand everything that happens as a result of that.
But it’s also equally true that we don’t understand that today. A good example is, you know, the whole till, no-till argument, right? So, you know, for years, farmers have gone in and, you know, tilled, plowed and tilled the field, turned it up. Well, who knows what they’re doing to the microbial population? It might be good, it might be bad. But that’s what we did with, you know, that’s how people farmed. And people are finally starting to now look at no-till and some of the benefits of that on a number of different levels.
To me, all of this is really about Science moving forward. And as science moves forward, we all get more information. And the more information we get, the better decisions and the better perspectives we can have on what products to put out there and where to take, where to take these innovations and how to apply them or how to use them in a productive way to help the planet, to help people, to help produce food. And so it’s going to be a learning curve. But to your point, if you’re not willing to take some risk and you’re not willing to accept that you’re going to have to learn things, you would never do anything.
And I think the one thing I think everybody would agree on today is that the status quo in agriculture, if nothing changes... We’re going to have a huge problem in 20 years, in 30 years with providing food security and nutrition to the planet. It’s just not going to happen. So you have to accept that standing still is unacceptable. Whether it’s from environmental sustainability or from a food production, you can’t stay still. And so that’s why you have to move forward. You have to take some chances. You have to do the innovation.
And then you have to believe you’re going to do it in such a way that You are protecting people in the planet at the same time as looking at evaluating and advancing new solutions.
Rebekah Carlson: This is absolutely fascinating, Mike. I am so interested in, I mean, you’re using powerful tools of synthetic biology and then working like the Wild West, right, of soil health and the microbial community of soil. So as we’re moving forward, I’m so excited to like Follow the work of JoinBio. Where could our listeners learn more about what y’all are doing?
Mike Miille: We’re a small company. A lot of the work we’re doing at this stage is relatively proprietary. We’re really kind of pioneering this area. So we’re a little bit careful about we’re not an open book and we don’t tell everybody everything. At At the same time, we try to provide some updates on our website. We’re trying to get out via podcasts and these type of communications. We’re trying to let people know about what we’re doing and why. I think that’s the important thing, and I think we’ll continue to do that. And actually, in your case, Rebecca, you know, you can call me anytime and we can also once we can have normal face to face meetings, we can have you come and visit the lab there in Boston and you can meet some of the scientists and we can kind of give you a picture of the progress we’re making and what the timelines look like.
Rebekah Carlson: Amazing. Will be a fascinating field trip, I’d say.
Mike Miille: Exactly. The ultimate dream for us would be to bring you out to a field trial and show you the field that has normal fertilizer and show you the field that the grower used half of what he normally would, and they both look the same. That’s really, in a nutshell, what we’re trying to accomplish as quickly as we can. At this point, we’re pretty optimistic that we’re going to get there, but predicting the exact timeline is a bit of a challenge, just like everything I think in science is.
Ross Kenyon: Well, thank you so much for being here, Mike. Links to all of those things are in the show notes if you’d like to follow up and learn more about JoinBio. Thanks, Mike.
Rebekah Carlson: Thank you, Mike.
Mike Miille: Oh, thanks, Ross. And thanks, Rebecca. It’s been a real pleasure and look forward to catching up sometime in the future with both of you. Take care.
Ross Kenyon: You too. And thanks for hanging out, Rebecca. Congratulations on your first co-host.
Rebekah Carlson: Oh, thank you.
Ross Kenyon: And yeah, yeah, it was great. And if you’re listening and you’d like to support the show, one thing you could do that Rebecca and I would certainly appreciate is going into your podcast app on your iPhone right now, giving us five stars, writing us a nice review. It helps us get more content out to more people. And we think that’s important. I’m sure you do too, because you’re spending your valuable time listening to us. So please do that if you can. And thanks so much for listening. Well, thank you so much for listening.
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