Mike Fero, Ph.D.
Organism Making and Modding
How AI and new molecular biology tricks are being used to hot-rod cells
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Conversation Date: 09/29/2021
Until recently, modifying microbial, plant, and animal cells has been a slow and artisanal process. However, with advances in technology allowing researchers to read, write, cut, copy and paste DNA much more easily, systems can now be put in places that vastly accelerate product development of everything from bio-based replacements for petroleum-derived chemicals to modified human cells that fight cancer. In this talk, we will review the progress made and show how AI-driven systems are being implemented that completely automate and optimize the production of modified cells.
Mike Fero, Ph.D.
TeselaGen Biotechnology
Dr. Fero is a California-based scientist and entrepreneur who is best known for his work on the fundamental physics of the Electroweak interaction at MIT and Stanford, human genome microarrays at Stanford, and synthetic biology at TeselaGen.
After leaving physics to spend several years developing software companies, Dr. Fero's expanding interest in fundamental biology culminated in collaboration with Pat Brown and David Botstein. Under their tutelage built and manufactured the world’s first human genome scale microarrays at Stanford.
Dr. Fero then turned to systems biology. With Lucy Shapiro and Harley McAdams at Stanford, he developed an automated high content diffraction-limited microscopic screen of triply fluorescently tagged bacteria to better understand the bacterial cell cycle.
Dr. Fero and two Stanford colleagues started TeselaGen to accelerate synthetic biology and the bio-based economy. Seeing a big deficiency in biologists’ ability to create what they imagine, TeselaGen focuses on making life better with an AI-enabled operating system for biotechnology.
