Ginkgo Bioworks and Persephone Biosciences complete Bacteroides toolkit

Ginkgo Bioworks and Persephone Biosciences, a synthetic biology company reimagining patient health through the microbiome, completed their first collaboration together, a Bacteroides engineering toolkit. Under the collaboration, both Persephone and Ginkgo have access to this reusable toolkit. Persephone will utilize the technology to develop a pipeline of microbiome therapeutics, and Ginkgo can use the technology as part of its broader platform offering for future customers. The technology comprises a set of generalizable genetic tools which can facilitate rapid Bacteroides engineering, including in the high-throughput anaerobic engineering context. While Persephone plans to utilize the Bacteroides technology for the rapid generation of therapeutics from its planned and ongoing oncology biomarker studies, Ginkgo may leverage the toolkit to address a range of customer needs and applications, including for customers developing microbiome based therapeutics.