Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collins: Leading molecular biologists insisted synthetic genetic toggle switches were impossible
“We had talked to about six or seven very serious molecular biologists who told us this couldn't happen, this couldn't work. They said for it to work, you're going to have to have a very tight off state, two very tight off states. That's going to be impossible.…”
Insight
Collins: Single-gene knockout attribution is absurd from a systems standpoint
“I maintain that in almost every biology experiment paper I've read, they've never had the controls that I'd like to see. Which is the idea that you can knock out a gene and that what's lacking and now can be attributed to the gene is absurd from a system stand…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collins: Synthetic biology currently lacks established quantitative design principles
“A major challenge in engineering biology, and more broadly, specifically synthetic biology, is that we don't really know the design principles.”
Insight
Collins: Platform bio startups target tech VCs; product startups target biotech VCs
“The platform companies in this place are playing to the technology investors. And the product companies are playing more toward the traditional biotech investors.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Collins: The 21st century will be the century of synthetic biology
“I think in many ways this century is going to be the century of biology, and really to put point on it, I think it's going to be the century of synthetic biology”
Insight
Jim Collins: Engineering models have predictive value without mechanism knowledge
“An engineer can do remarkably well in many instances with little, if any, understanding of mechanism. And that we'll get after a black box. You can represent a model that gives you some sense of relation between the input and output of, say, going back to our …”
Insight
Collins: Serial biological testing takes 20x longer than parallel engineering
“The young biologists in my lab will instead pick one design, one embodiment of that design, and they're going to drill down in great detail Over, instead of two weeks, over six weeks. Realize that it didn't work, and then they're going to go and create the nex…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Jim Collins: Engineers in his lab resist using directed evolution
“I've been in the SynBio world now for about two decades, and I have yet to get significant buy-in from the engineers in my lab for doing directed evolution.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Collins: Combining synthetic biology, directed evolution, and ML is the future
“I think the marriage of direct evolution with synthetic biology really is also the future, coupled to machine learning.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collins: Early bioenergy synbio firms spent $8 to produce $1 of gas
“So many of these early companies got to be pretty good at producing one dollar worth of gasoline, but it cost them eight dollars to do it, which was a horrible business model.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Collins: Synthetic bio will drive carbon capture and coral restoration within a decade
“I think climate is really just beginning to excite the community and broadly environmental issues on two counts. One is in what way could we use algae and other organisms to pull more carbon out of the atmosphere? Can we help reverse the trend on using biology…”
Assertion Supported
Jim Collins: Synthetic biology team built functional genetic toggle switch in nine months
“Nonetheless, in nine months, he had a functioning bistable toggle switch.”
Insight
Collins: Engineers prioritize functional biological results over understanding mechanisms
“The scientist is curious, wants to understand, is looking for discovery. The engineer wants to get it to work, and doesn't necessarily care do they understand how it works, but that it works.”
Opinion
Collins: Synthetic biology has been hampered by excessive hype from the start
“Synthetic biology has been hampered by basically too much hype from its very beginning.”
Insight
Collins: In-house manufacturing significantly increases synthetic bio firm valuations
“Having the ability to manufacture your product in house significantly increases your value.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collins: Companies are using synthetic circuits to program pathogen-resistant plants
“You're increasingly seeing companies turn towards synthetic circuits to Alter traits in a programmable fashion of plants and to enable them to be more robust to pathogens.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collins: Biomedical engineers played a minor role in early genome efforts
“And what's interesting is the biomedical engineers did not play a major role in the genome effort.”
Assertion Partly supported
Collins: Only seven public microarray datasets existed in the late 1990s
“And when I got pulled in, there were only seven publicly available data sets. So the idea you could reverse engineer large scale network was ludicrous.”
Assertion Supported
Collins: 30% to 40% of E. coli genes remain functionally unannotated
“There still is a high percentage of the genes that are not functionally annotated in E. Coli, 30 to 40%.”
Jim Collins