Turning Microplastics Into Rocks with Alexei - BioBytes

From Chemistry to Synbio: Alexei's Early Scientific Path So hey, Alexi, thanks so much for joining us today. How are you? Speaker 2 Doing great. Thank you. Super excited to be here. Speaker 1 Amazing. I'm really excited to record this episode with you and dive deeper into your work. So just for context, Biobytes is a biotechnology podcast. We started to help students of really any age discover career paths in this ever expanding field. And you've been involved in so much across this sector. So could you start by just sharing a little bit about yourself and the kind of work that you do? Speaker 2 Yeah, totally. So I'm Alexi. I'm also a high schooler, high school senior, and yeah, I've been super into science as long as I can remember. It started with chemistry, you know, it's like total nerd about all things science growing up, like asked for science books for Christmas type of thing. And that slowly evolved into biology, especially as I was exposed to more, more and more about what's happening in the field. And it was just almost too exciting to not get involved in, right the just the pace of new things happening, new models, new partnerships, new innovations. Because I came from the same sort of accelerator or human accelerator that I'm sure you've had a lot of guests from the knowledge society, which really emphasizes emerging technologies and following what you're most drawn to. And I think that sort of natural love for the the pure theoretical science that I found a really delicate balance between, you know, being able to understand the deep science and then also always through the lens of application in biotech because it kind of straddles those two worlds, which is rare. Bridging Transactional and Theoretical Science in Synbio And I know you did a lot of your work in synbio, so why did that call out to you in specific? Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it's exactly that. I think it's so a bit more context about me. I actually come from a bit of an international background. So I grew up speaking German and French, lived across the world there. And I've also got the opportunity to work in science, like in labs both here and in Europe. And I found that both of those experiences taught me the extremes of what research can become. So here in the USI worked at UCSF and the first day that I came, I talked to the Pi just to introduce myself. And before telling me what the LAT, you know, his philosophy behind the lab and the questions he was looking into. He talked about the citation counts, a Genentech deal. And it was the sort of super transactional approach with science where it was just hyper focused on translation and getting things out of the lab and getting it to scale as much as humanly possible. Versus then the summer after, when I was in France at the Pasteur Institute, it's a biomedical Research Institute. I asked the PhD student that I was working under, you know, what's the application of your project? Cuz that was kind of my mindset after the UCSF experience. It's like, OK, this is what this is about, right? Spin things out. And he said, I've never really thought about that. I just do it because it's beautiful. So I kind of just thought these two extremes of super deep theoretical science without much application and the hyper transactional American approach. And I just think Symbio, I, I was just talking about this a little bit, but kind of falls in this really nice middle ground between the two. Speaker 1 I see. That's like a beautiful answer. And I know that especially I live in Canada, so a lot of the labs that I've worked in or I've had the opportunity to visit are similar to the ones in the in the US where they're super transactional. They really focus on like, what can you bring to the table? How can you help us with these research papers? And I've never been able to go to labs in Europe, but I think it'd be super cool because I know they view science in like a fundamentally different light. So, yeah, totally. Engineering Microbes for World Impact with iGEM I also see you're really involved with igem. So can you tell us a little bit more about your project or maybe what that journey looked like for you? How'd you get involved? Speaker 2 Yeah, no, totally. So just for context, igem is international genetically engineered machine. It's a competition slash conference where teams of I'd say 15 to 3035 students in high school, collegiate, even post collegiate have a year to get microbes to do something useful. That's pretty much the the, the gist of it, right? You engineer microbes to have some kind of world positive impact. And what it culminates in is this one week conference in Paris last week of October, where it's super cool. You have these villages of categories. So like bioremediation, diagnostics, therapeutics, and it's sort of like the world's fair for biotechnology. And so if you're in synbio, the industry itself is a little bit fragmented in the sense that if you're trying to find something to do at our age, I gem will stick out immediately, right? That's kind of the most obvious way to get involved. So I was conscious of it pretty early, cold emailed every team in the Bay Area. It turns out they were all dead except for the one that I joined. And it turned out to be an amazing experience. We worked on one sentence being turning microplastics into rocks using E coli. I can go more into the science if we need to, but I think it's a really great experience in working in a very opinionated team, balancing a lot of personalities and everything that comes with leadership, but also obviously getting a ton of intuition around the field. Like we pivoted at least five times in terms of ideas and you're reading 1020 papers per idea, right? So you just get all of this understanding of the field just because of how much iteration you do to get to a final point. Speaker 1 Yeah, it also says, oh, go ahead, go ahead. Speaker 2 I was also saying it also just starts building intuition around what works on the technical level because you fail a ton in lab. I mean the the structure of how the I gem works is called DBTL cycles. So design, build, test, learn. And that implies that you'll fail, right? Learn at the end, learn what possibly went wrong with our experiments, which it definitely did. And so, yeah, you just get this sort of really great feedback loop of exploration. Speaker 1 Yeah. And you said like teams of 15 to 35, that's huge. So how did you kind of, I guess you touched on a little bit how you navigated that, but did you guys have a mentor or something like that, like someone like overseeing the project? Speaker 2 Yeah. So I think so you do have mentors first of all, especially in high school. You have someone more technical, you have someone more administrative where it's like, OK guys, come on, we actually need a budget, we need to pay taxes. You know, there's some adult thing to do here. Can't just leave that all up to 16 year olds. But in terms of the team size, there's actually a lot to do that isn't biology. And I think that's where this becomes really unique because the final product of I gem is a wiki and a video and a presentation. So a lot of that is on the creative side of obviously design. A lot of that is sort of in communication and articulating a very technical idea to an audience with a wide range of different expertise. You know, all of these things need more talents than just like being a hyper analytical scientist. You need the interpersonal skills and so there's always a job for everyone, even within the science. The more science part, you know, there's dry lab, which is on the computational side. So kids who are more into the coding and math side work on that. There's obviously wet lab. There's, you know, conceptualization and presentation. So I think it's a really unique way to get people from a really wide range of experiences, both working on the same project and excited about the same project because you're presenting to them in the end. Speaker 1 Exactly. And you guys come together as a team, you're able to present this thing that you said you've been working on for a year with all these people. So I think that'd be awesome. Turning Microplastics into Rocks Using Engineered E. coli Could you tell us a little bit more about the project? Like what did you guys come up with? Speaker 2 Yeah, totally. So we pivoted a lot. What we ended up working on is a system using E coli, just a super standard model Organism to trap microplastics and form a mineral shell around them. So microplastics obviously a huge issue, right? When you put plastic in a dump or anywhere else, the UV light will degrade the actual polymers and create these really small specs that are that leach into the environment and are really hard to get rid of. A lot of the current efforts with microplastics are focused on degradation. So breaking them down, and that sounds great in theory, but when you look at the chemical of what a microplastic actually is, there's a lot of harmful byproducts that come from the chemistry of breaking down a plastic. And whatever environment the microplastic was in is the same environment that those byproducts will be in, therefore also harming us. And immobilization, which is, you know, stopping them from moving and doing more harm is not as much of A taken approach. And So what sparked all of this was this paper that showed that oceanic microbial consortia. So the microbes in the ocean can already stick to micro plastics because they form these things called bio films. This is where, you know, we just have so much to learn from evolution. This is kind of another response to what I love synbio, because a lot of this is just working backwards from what 4 billion years of evolution has taught us and optimized and seeing what it can do for our species and failing along the way. And, you know, getting humbled by a bacteria without a brain is it's a pretty interesting experience. But yeah, so you have these oceanic microbes that form these biofilms, which are sort of sticky webs of proteins, amyloid fibers, that is the specific name that that make it more suitable for these bacteria to live in. Turns out they have adhesive properties to plastic, so they bind to plastic. And another paper showed that soil microbes can form mineral shells around microplastic in soil, immobilizing it. And so you have this enzyme called carbonic anhydrase, which is what the soil microbes were expressing, which basically takes CO2 and calcium. So it also takes CO2 out of the environment, that's another plus and turns it into calcium carbonate, which is like chalk, like the mineral. And so if you combine the sort of sticky ability with this mineral forming ability, you get microplastics that are trapped and have a shell around them and can't do any more harm. And so that was the gist of the project. Speaker 1 That sounds awesome. That sounds so cool. And I think there could be so many like implications to like future use cases for a project like this, especially if you guys like selling this kind of technology or selling these kind of microplastics. So what was your kind of role in the team? Were you more part of like the wet lab, the dry lab? Speaker 2 Yeah. So I joined in late April, which is pretty late in the full cycle considering, right, it's a year. And so I had to kind of build my role from the ground up. I initially went on just trying to learn what the team dynamic was, where I could be more useful. At first they put me in charge of fundraising and I somehow won the Oxford Nanopore grant, which which is basically got us free sequencing from this amazing company called Oxford Nanopore. It's this completely new approach to sequencing DNA. And so then from there, I thought there was a lot of potential for dry lab in our project to model our bacteria because it's a pretty complicated system. I'm I'm sure you're already tired of hearing the words, you know, mineral and, and so there's a lot to model so that we can have better predictions about it. And we do think that, like you're saying, it's a super promising space and so to leave as many artifacts behind that other teams and other research groups can use like a model or as much documentation. Speaker 1 For sure, yeah. Speaker 2 Super important, right? And so that that's kind of why I wanted to get involved with the dry lab. So that's what we did. We built a model. It was really interactive actually. So you could upload your own data from how your enzymes behaving into the model and it could tell you a bunch of stuff about your system. So I ended up leading fundraising and dry lab for the team and then went to Paris with them, got to present to the judges and on stage and stuff. And it was, it was amazing. I mean, it was rare to be surrounded by people who are as into microbes as you, so. Speaker 1 Yeah. So was that in? Were you saying like, was that in October? Were those like the finals? Speaker 2 Last week in October. Speaker 1 Yeah. OK. Nice. That's very interesting. Discovering Biotech Opportunities at San Francisco's Frontier Tower So to pivot a little bit, I would notice on your LinkedIn, you said you were involved for summer with this organization called Frontier Tower. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. So I've grown up in San Francisco my whole life, and this summer was kind of the first time I've been able to take advantage of it, take advantage of the San Francisco people rave about, right? People say it's the center of the world, you know, come here. It's just like the density of people working on amazing stuff is completely unparalleled. And for me, it was always just like, all right, whatever, I live here, you know, have my childhood. But there's this app called Luma, which shows you hackathons and conferences and stuff. Strongly recommend if you live in any major city, just hop on there, see what stuff's happening because I guarantee you, you will be surprised by the amount of cool stuff happening every day. So I go on Luma one day. I just see Wet Lab Hackathon and I'm like, huh, OK, that seems cool. And so it turns out there's this tower in San Francisco called Frontier Tower, which was actually a we work that went out of business. Long story, but it's a skyscraper in downtown where every floor is focused on a different area of deep tech. So you have the biotech floor, neurotech floor, you know, etherium floor, AI floor, and each of them have their own super dedicated builders that pretty much live there and host awesome events just like the biotech floor hosting this one. And so that's exactly what this was one week to build out a project and pitch it to the sponsor. The sponsor was this bio security company. So you get the weekend to just pitch your conceptual idea. If they thought it was good enough, they would give you the week of lab space and whatever reagents and expenses that came with that. And so the week to actually build out your thing and then the last week to be like, OK, here's our proof of concept. Here's where I could go. What we did was a way to detect lead with a lead free system, with a cell free system. So you know, sort of these freeze dried DNA cartridges and you can actually swap whatever DNA you were using to detect different types of metals. So oh, there might be cadmium in this environment, different cartridge, put the water sample in and it would tell you how much cadmium is down to the parts per billion. And again, somehow they found that convincing and we got to win the hackathon. And now I've been super, super lucky to be able to talk to the sponsors a lot. Recently got to visit their lab the other week. They're working on some really awesome stuff. But yeah, SF is amazing. Hop on Luma. There's insane opportunities. Yeah. What that taught me is just, you know, go seek stuff out because you actually just never know. Speaker 1 Yeah, for sure. That's so cool. We don't have anything like that here, especially I live in Niagara Falls, so it's like a little bit further away from Toronto. So whenever we go downtown, I see all these like companies in these places that are doing this, such cool stuff. And I'm like, oh, I'm a little bit too far away, but. Speaker 2 Yeah, I know. And it's funny, you know, TKS like I was talking about, there's this principle that they, they, they teach you where when you're young people will on first sight think, treat you like, like less seriously, right? But I think once you prove your commitment and competence, if you do, I think they will list, they will treat you with more, they, they will pay more attention to you than in adults with the same amount of demonstrated enthusiasm, right? Because I, I just think it's motivating to adults to hear like a fresh generation being insured. And I think that's exactly the effect that this hackathon did that that brought us to the outcome of this hackathon because I think the other groups had very technically impressive projects, but it I think it really is just a momentum and an age thing. Speaker 1 Yeah. And even just like your spirit, your, like you said your enthusiasm for continuing this project because like in the end, that's kind of what science is meant for, right? So that's definitely super important. Finding Fulfillment: Work as Leisure and Internal Drive So pivoting a little off of that, obviously you're evolved in a lot. So I know we were talking about like I gem before and now this like frontier tower thing. How do you find the time to balance your day and balance my day? Like, I mean both getting your work done, so like getting those technical projects done and stuff, but also having some time for like more relaxed things such as connecting or hanging out with friends, doing your hobbies, things like that. Speaker 2 Yeah, totally. I think I am the worst person to ask this question because I'm a chronic procrastinator. Fun fact, Speaking of AJEM, you know, flew back from Paris, it's the last week of October in the US. The early colleges are due November 1st. Did most of my applications on the plane back. So I am a horrible person to ask this. But overall, I think, I think it's the way we define tasks and you know, concentration and grinding is really flawed right now in the West. Because I think when you really take the time to explore the space of what you can do, what you can work on, what you can dedicate your time to, and you really come to something that it's not just you pushing to understand it. It's also sort of a pull at you in like, OK, I have so much conviction about this. I, this is what keeps me up at night, right? I don't think it's fair to call that a task anymore or call that work because I think in a way that is leisure. I think that's not relaxing, but that's deeply fulfilling, right? That's, it's not like a grind to get through every minute of that. So in terms of finding the time, the answer is I find it because this is what I choose to do, right? It, you know, whereas with more, you know, jumping through the hoop, things like the tragic SAT and and school and and things like that, it is very much just, OK, this is the reality. I have to get through it because, you know, the system's a bit behind, but if you really love what you do and you see all of the projects and the outcomes as byproducts of your effort, like not working backwards from OK, I want to build a cool project and get recognition. Speaker 1 For it but like. Speaker 2 I love this biology and you know, if things work out, one thing leads to another, maybe it becomes a cool project, right? I think that's sort of the mentality I have and why I spent so much time on it. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that's definitely the key. We were actually doing this thing in my. We are part of like an ethics group and we're actually talking about like work versus leisure and how like you're more European countries actually blend the two together. And they're like, my work is the stuff that I love doing, so it becomes my leisure. And I think that's like you said, it's very like flawed in the West where it's like, OK, yeah, you clock in for your nine to five. You hate your job and then you want to come home. Then you want to like relax. But definitely. Yeah. And you basically answer the next question anyways, which was like, really which it it focused on like your internal drive. So like, why as a high school student, do you keep pushing to do the things that you do and so. You kind of answer like you love it and you kind of want to do it, even though no one necessarily is going to be watching or not necessarily searching for that recognition. Cultivating Human Connection in an AI World So moving on to our next question. What's a skill in the future that you think everyone will need? So I know this is very open-ended, but for example, like proficiency in a certain type of coding language or familiarity with like a different type of science. What do you think? Speaker 2 Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think obviously we're in the AI boom, right? And I think let as with everything, scarcity creates value. And as more and more of our interactions become with AI and our information is presented by AI, people are going to value human face to face connection more. So I think the ability to have this sort of contagious enthusiasm about something and get people behind an idea that might have never even heard of the concepts you're talking about might not be super technical and have all the prerequisites you need to communicate your project at, at the depth that you needed. I think being able to rally people like that and have that interpersonal human to human presentation and communication skills is something that just fundamentally by design, AI will not be able to do because it inherently is not a human right. I I think, yes, deep technical knowledge, breadth of knowledge as well, because I think, you know, transferring ideas across disciplines is a super important skill. But we're already seeing AI excel at that. This morning it got the hot second highest ever score on the Putnam exam, which is like the one of the hardest math tests. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So on a purely technical level, you know, maybe you rethink the, the, the value a human can provide. But yeah, I I do think in terms of human interaction through the lens of technical things. Speaker 1 Yeah, and I think that kind of goes back to what we were talking about before, right? Like having that spirit and that enthusiasm that you carry to products even when no one necessarily is watching. Because I know it's like very easy to be able to like bring this enthusiasm to a project when like there's an interviewer sitting there or something like that. But just being able to do that by yourself internally, I think it's super, super, super important. Navigating Ambition and Talent in Biotech Hubs Yeah, no, totally. I'm actually curious to hear about this in Canada because you know, obviously SF, it's like literally the culture. I think in the Bay Area, you know, our age, we're sort of the second Gen. I think a lot of the Bay Area is very, very new talent and money. So a lot of the kids here, a lot of my peers, they come from families that are, have built their lives from nothing, right? Are immigrants with insane talent and insane accomplishments. And I think that's a huge problem to grow up in because what happens is that you are surrounded by accomplishments. Speaker 1 And. Speaker 2 And I think that gives you this mentality of working backwards from the result and not finding something you deeply love. And like we're talking about seeing the results as byproducts. And I'm curious with Canada because, you know, there's a lot of talk about Toronto being on the up and in terms of like a hub for talent, I'm curious if it's kind of the same thing. Speaker 1 Yeah, I can't, I'm not sure like exactly how accurate this information is 'cause like I said, I do live in Niagara, which is a little bit far away from Toronto, so I don't go up there very often. But from what I've seen, it's, I think it's a lot of the same stuff. I do think there's a lot of new talent. So a lot of those like people ages like 20 to 30 who are really building a lot of stuff. And I think, I think I would say that's the majority of it. There's not too many like super well established, like families who own these biotech companies and stuff like that. But as soon as you kind of go away from that like Greater Toronto Area and you kind of go like a couple hours away, there's nothing really. So like, for example, I was trying to find something to do this summer and there's this amazing like food technology, biotechnology, like lab that's here in Nygon Lake and they're like, we just don't literally have enough resources to support anyone. We have this like this, this, there's like this team of three and they're like, that's it. We don't have enough money, We don't have enough of this. And I'm like, wow. So yeah, I think there's, it definitely depends on where you live and like the population density and stuff like that, No. Speaker 2 And it's funny and I, I just think like that sounds bad on the outside, but I also just think it's a lot more of a genuine way to live because if you are ambitious into all of these things and that is legitimately who you are, then you'll surround yourself with such, right? But if you're in a place where that is the defining culture and sort of like even the barrier to entry for anything is to be like hyper ambitious and have this insane conviction around something. You sort of like have this almost this culture of performative ambition where it, it's almost like a like a commodity, right? Like, you know, why seeing a lot of these accelerators talk about like the the Stanford drop out being an entire trope about, you know, you're an unconventional founder and you had so much conviction that you had to leave. It's like turning it into this currency of ambition and demonstrating your, your love for something that just becomes like super performative. And yeah, I I think the more distributed that talent becomes across domains and the world geographically, the more fair a representation you get of people that actually do things for what they are. Speaker 1 Yeah, and I think it's a lot easier as well because you're not competing, like you said, with all these people who are so performative. Because, for example, in like San Francisco, every other tagline is like, we're for the ambitious builders. And I'm like, OK, at a point there can't be this many ambitious builders. Like ambition kind of starts to lose its meaning then, right? So I feel like when you get these places where there's like 1 local university in the entire area and then you have like 1 professor, and I think your ambition can really show there. And it's kind of defined as something else rather than just like the San Francisco Bay, like every kids resume is the exact same sort of thing. Speaker 2 Yeah, no, totally. And it's it is funny, the whole ambitious founder. I I don't know how many times I've seen there. There's this joke on social media of the AI posters going into as you drive into San Francisco. It's like count the amount of times you see an AI buzzword inference, you know, database. Yeah, it's it's kind of like it's self confirming in a weird way. And like I was saying with like as you get more exposure to the world and distribute the talent, like most people in terms of the AI boom, I mean, I know we're at the center of it. Have maybe heard of ChatGPT. It was this guest speaker at a conference that blew my mind with this first, because, you know, we're surrounded by these tools and it's completely integral part of our daily lives. But you know, it's easy to forget that we're leaving the majority behind and in the dark and frankly, why they very fairly reject all of this, right? Like, oh, the tech bro culture because it's very insular, right? We it's you speak to yourselves and and you stay with him very much. But yeah. Exploring Biotech: Interdisciplinary Paths and Nature's Inspiration Yeah, I completely agree. And then moving on, it's like a final question. This is one that we kind of always ask everyone where we bring it back towards Biobytes. So like I mentioned before, Biobytes is directed towards curious young people who are interested in pursuing, you know, biotech and related fields in the future. So how would you suggest that young people get involved in this field? Speaker 2 In biotech specifically, I think the first step is knowing you actually love it, right? I would say try every other science. I think you know if you're generally drawn to science pretty early on. Speaker 1 100%, yeah. Speaker 2 Really try the subdomains. You know, like I, I told you, I was on a complete chemistry rabbit hole before this. I thought I was going to go into material science that was going to be my life until I found this and totally fell in love with it. And so, yeah, being hyper intentional about if it's the right thing is the very first thing. And if you do think it is. I would say there is a balance between deep technical knowledge and understanding. It's also where you want your application layer to be, right? If you know you want to go into research, then it's obviously much more deep and technical. If you want to do something more entrepreneurial, then understand the market and the landscape and how IP works really deeply. But I think in general, at our age where we're not really specializing, it cannot hurt to try to learn as much as you can everyday about it and not restrict yourself to the technical or to the market or to anything else. And also really important, don't leave behind other people or other disciplines, especially other disciplines because there's so many intersections with biotech. You know, a company that does neuromorphic computing, which is basically computing and a lot of the AI structures that mimic the human brain just raised, I think it was 470 million preceded. Speaker 1 Oh my. Speaker 2 God, wow right so and that's computing and biotech. That's not just pure biotech, right? Obviously there's an explosion of AI and biotech companies happening right now. And you know, brain, computer interfaces, I the list goes on and on about where the fields intersect. And it is also where you can carve out your most defined niche if you find a really compelling application of the theory to another field. Because I think often the pure theory outpaces the application by a lot. So I think a lot of what we already know can be repurposed. So I think really understanding what the pain points are of other fields and what could potentially be solved by biotech. Speaker 1 Yeah, and especially I really like the point where you said like not getting stuck in that hole. And I know there's so much push, like be involved in technology and AI and stuff like that. But like you said, there's so many intersections of things that we've never even heard of. So like, for example, I heard about food technology and I was like, what is this? And then I realized, Oh my God, there's so many applications with food tech and biotech. And so I'm kind of looking at that. So definitely just continue learning and not, yeah, like not digging yourself into a hole and staying there. Speaker 2 Totally. Well, sorry, biotech. I would just say stay inspired by nature because that is ultimately the sculptor of all of this. And I think as much as we can learn from it and as much as we can learn to repurpose and understand how it optimizes these things across billions of years, two things that are useful for our species is the more we can do with the field like that is in the very nature of the field. We're engineering a system billions of years older than us. It's a back and forth conversation where we try to engineer, we learn something back. And I think being open to learn from nature, yeah. Thank You and Final Encouragement from Alexei I think that's a really nice note to end it off on. Well, Alexi, thank you so much for being on the show. I love learning about your Hi Jem, your frontier tower work. Just like your thoughts on biotech, the San Francisco landscape. I had an amazing time. I hope you did as well. Speaker 2 Totally. Thank you so much. And yeah, good luck to everyone working on whatever they are. Speaker 1 Yeah.