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Using Bacteria to Dye Jeans · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:20
Speaker 2: There's this idea people have been waving their hands about
0:23
Speaker 2: for a while. Now, what if we're about to have
0:25
Speaker 2: a huge wave of technological progress in biology. On a
0:30
Speaker 2: few recent episodes of this show, we've talked about one
0:33
Speaker 2: obvious place we'd see that wave in medicine, with things
0:37
Speaker 2: like new drugs and human tissues grown in the lab.
0:40
Speaker 2: But the impact could be much broader than that. There's
0:43
Speaker 2: this whole nascent industry called synthetic biology. People are trying
0:47
Speaker 2: to genetically engineer yeast and bacteria to produce everything from
0:51
Speaker 2: fertilizer to fragrances. Take, for example, indigo colored dye, the
0:56
Speaker 2: dye used on billions of pairs of genes a year.
1:00
Speaker 2: That's j E, A N S, not ge nes, unfortunate
1:05
Speaker 2: hominem in this context today, that in goo colored dye
1:09
Speaker 2: typically comes from petrochemicals, and it's made in a process
1:12
Speaker 2: with lots of nasty byproducts. But what if you could
1:15
Speaker 2: use bacteria to make industrial quantities of that dye and
1:19
Speaker 2: get rid of all the nasty by products. I'm Jacob
1:26
Speaker 2: Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem the show where
1:29
Speaker 2: I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
1:33
Speaker 2: My guests today are Tammy Sue and Michelle Jude. They
1:36
Speaker 2: are the co founders of a company called Hugh hu
1:40
Speaker 2: u Me. Michelle is the CEO and Tammy is the
1:44
Speaker 2: CSO Chief Scientific Officer. Their problem is this, how can
1:50
Speaker 2: you get bacteria to produce indigo dye? And how can
1:53
Speaker 2: you do it cheaply and reliably enough to replace the
1:56
Speaker 2: dye made from petrochemicals.
2:00
Speaker 1: To start.
2:00
Speaker 2: I asked Michelle and Tammy how they arrived at their problem.
2:04
Speaker 2: As it turns out, they discovered the problem from very
2:07
Speaker 2: different directions.
2:09
Speaker 1: Shell answered first, So, my family, you know, we're immigrants
2:14
Speaker 1: from China, came here to you know, move to la
2:18
Speaker 1: when I was three years old, and that's when my
2:20
Speaker 1: parents actually started their own kind of traditional, you know,
2:25
Speaker 1: wholesale apparel business. So I really, I would say, I
2:29
Speaker 1: grew up in this like fashion and apparel business, but
2:33
Speaker 1: not in a very glamorous way. My experiences or or
2:39
Speaker 1: recollections of the fashion industry. Growing up in this family
2:45
Speaker 1: business was literally you know, traveling with my parents in
2:50
Speaker 1: family vacations back to China over the summers and visiting
2:55
Speaker 1: these mills or garment factories and really firsthand witnessing some
3:01
Speaker 1: of the the negative impacts right of apparel manufacturing and
3:07
Speaker 1: specifically you know, my parents their business was a they
3:11
Speaker 1: were doing streetwear right in the nineties, and so Denham
3:16
Speaker 1: was like a big part of that. And so you
3:18
Speaker 1: know it was specifically denim mills and and denim manufacturing.
3:23
Speaker 2: And so what did you see, like specifically when when
3:26
Speaker 2: you mentioned that you saw saw that side of the industry, Like,
3:30
Speaker 2: is there a particular trip or a particular thing that
3:33
Speaker 2: you saw that that stands out in your memory.
3:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think about you know, going to
3:39
Speaker 1: the kind of literally like you know, textile manufacturing cities
3:44
Speaker 1: right in southern China where it's just like, you know,
3:50
Speaker 1: a bunch of kind of conglomertive factories all you know,
3:53
Speaker 1: all together. The air quality kind of outside isn't great.
3:57
Speaker 1: You go into the facility, it's even worse. Everybody has
4:01
Speaker 1: kind of masks on. There are basically like blue particles.
4:05
Speaker 3: In the air.
4:06
Speaker 1: You know, it's just on people's skins, you know. And
4:10
Speaker 1: I was a child right at this time, but those
4:14
Speaker 1: are the kind of like images that are I think
4:17
Speaker 1: still ingrained in my mind. I Mean, the dye industry
4:21
Speaker 1: is a key kind of a fender, I would say
4:25
Speaker 1: in terms of, like, you know, jobs that pose threats
4:30
Speaker 1: to safety, both in terms of worker health as well
4:33
Speaker 1: as community health. You know, dying and the effluence from dying,
4:39
Speaker 1: you know, is a major source of water and kind
4:42
Speaker 1: of community pollution. Right. And by the way, you know,
4:45
Speaker 1: in the indigo process for example, right, specifically, you've got
4:49
Speaker 1: you know, not just analine, which is a benzene derivative,
4:53
Speaker 1: right that has true carcinogenic properties, but you've got you know,
4:58
Speaker 1: sodamide and formaldehyde and you know, these harsh chemicals that
5:03
Speaker 1: are going into the production process of these core dyes
5:09
Speaker 1: have done a lot of innovation in the fashion industry,
5:12
Speaker 1: but the kind of dye space itself hasn't seen a
5:15
Speaker 1: whole lot of innovation.
5:17
Speaker 2: Good. So that's your introduction to denim really early. The
5:23
Speaker 2: seed is planted, right, yeah, Tammy, how do how do
5:27
Speaker 2: you come into the story?
5:30
Speaker 4: So my story and background is very different from Michelle's.
5:34
Speaker 4: And so when I was in college, I was introduced
5:38
Speaker 4: to this field of synthetic biology, which is how do
5:42
Speaker 4: we take these microbes you know, e. Coli or yeast
5:47
Speaker 4: and actually program them to make them produce useful chemicals
5:51
Speaker 4: for for people.
5:52
Speaker 2: So you're in you go to grad school, you go
5:55
Speaker 2: to get a PhD in Berkeley, and you find yourself
5:58
Speaker 2: in a lab. What's what's the sort of generally what's
6:01
Speaker 2: the lab working on?
6:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the lab I was in was working on
6:06
Speaker 4: how do we develop tools for engineering E. Coli and
6:11
Speaker 4: yeast microbes to produce things like drug precursors or colors
6:18
Speaker 4: or kind of other biochemicals.
6:22
Speaker 2: Get microbes to make useful stuff for people exactly exactly?
6:27
Speaker 2: And how do you land on indigo?
6:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was there was this idea kind of floating
6:32
Speaker 4: around the lab right before I joined, about how do
6:37
Speaker 4: we produce indigo? Actually, I think it was because people
6:42
Speaker 4: wanted to be able to see what was going on
6:44
Speaker 4: inside the cells. Cells are really tiny, right, and often
6:49
Speaker 4: you make these changes and you try to get the
6:51
Speaker 4: enzymes to do different things, but you don't really know
6:55
Speaker 4: exactly what's going on without doing some complicated assay. So
6:59
Speaker 4: there was an idea that maybe we could use a
7:02
Speaker 4: color output, Like we change an enzyme and we get
7:05
Speaker 4: this color output, and indigo is kind of this natural
7:08
Speaker 4: diet's found and plants, so they were like, maybe we
7:10
Speaker 4: could use indigo to see what's kind of going on
7:13
Speaker 4: in the cell.
7:14
Speaker 2: So just to be clear. So just to be clear,
7:16
Speaker 2: the idea of getting a cell to express indigo this
7:20
Speaker 2: blue color. The idea wasn't oh, let's make clean or
7:24
Speaker 2: dye for blue jens. It's let's make a tool for
7:27
Speaker 2: scientists to use to understand what's going on inside the cell.
7:32
Speaker 4: Initially, yeah, and then as we were kind of looking
7:35
Speaker 4: into it, it actually seemed like indigo itself was a
7:39
Speaker 4: really big problem in the textile industry. Pretty much all
7:43
Speaker 4: indigos used for dnim genes and it we learned that
7:48
Speaker 4: all of it, the vast majority of it, is sourced
7:51
Speaker 4: from petrochemical sources right now, and so there was this
7:54
Speaker 4: need to actually make it in a biologically sourced manner.
7:58
Speaker 4: My advisor was on this fellowship and they published an
8:02
Speaker 4: article showing some very preliminary results that we were having
8:06
Speaker 4: in the lab on this project, and it was published
8:09
Speaker 4: on the UC Berkeley website, and then Dune and brands
8:13
Speaker 4: in the area actually started to reach out to him
8:16
Speaker 4: and say, oh, I heard you're working on other ways
8:20
Speaker 4: to make indigo. Can we talk what is it like?
8:23
Speaker 4: How much you know? Can we do a little trial, so.
8:26
Speaker 2: You decide to start the company. Tammy, you've done this research, Like,
8:31
Speaker 2: what exactly had you already done? What did you know
8:33
Speaker 2: how to do when you started the company.
8:36
Speaker 4: So at the end of my PhD, the last figure
8:40
Speaker 4: in the paper that we published was actually kind of
8:44
Speaker 4: unusual for a research paper. I had died one piece
8:47
Speaker 4: of fabric. It was a scarf with this indigo die.
8:53
Speaker 4: It was definitely died in a way that was not
8:56
Speaker 4: scalable and not industrially viable by any means.
9:00
Speaker 3: It smelled a little bit funky.
9:02
Speaker 2: How how was it died? Like, how did you how
9:05
Speaker 2: did you diet?
9:06
Speaker 4: I actually hung up a shoelace across across the hallway
9:12
Speaker 4: and just kind of flopped this piece of fabric over it,
9:16
Speaker 4: and I sprayed the dye against it and used the
9:19
Speaker 4: bucket to catch the remaining dye at the bottom. It
9:23
Speaker 4: was definitely an experience, but we at the end of
9:26
Speaker 4: the day we got this nice blue fabric and it
9:30
Speaker 4: was kind of our first proof of concept.
9:32
Speaker 2: So it worked. It worked at least for one scarf,
9:35
Speaker 2: one time in the hallway, at least once exactly good.
9:38
Speaker 1: I want to clarify that even though it turned blue
9:42
Speaker 1: that before. Right, we were literally telling the story yesterday
9:45
Speaker 1: to the company. It was like that was like, okay,
9:47
Speaker 1: blue is great. We had no idea you know, oh
9:51
Speaker 1: it's kind of blue greenish, or like you know what
9:54
Speaker 1: exactly all of that means. We had no capability to
9:59
Speaker 1: measure or understand any of that. So really getting it
10:03
Speaker 1: to those industrial specs, I would say, was probably the
10:06
Speaker 1: first major challenge that the company that we as a
10:11
Speaker 1: team had to tackle.
10:12
Speaker 2: So tell me about that, right, Like, blue isn't good enough? Right,
10:16
Speaker 2: you can't go to some genes manufacturer's going to make
10:18
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand pairs of genes be like yeah, it's blue.
10:20
Speaker 2: They're not gonna be like great, send it to us, right,
10:22
Speaker 2: so what do you have to do to get it
10:24
Speaker 2: to be the right kind of blue?
10:25
Speaker 4: So kind of where where we were at when at
10:28
Speaker 4: this first proof of concept was okay, so you have cells.
10:32
Speaker 4: They're making this indigo molecule. We know it's literally indigo molecule.
10:35
Speaker 4: The cells are growing in their own media. We just
10:38
Speaker 4: try to like you know, break open the cells and
10:41
Speaker 4: try to you know, get the blue onto the fabric.
10:44
Speaker 3: But that's not necessarily good enough, right, so you've.
10:47
Speaker 2: Got the right molecule, what do you have to what
10:51
Speaker 2: do you have to fix when you're you know, starting
10:53
Speaker 2: the company, leaving academia, going to make this industrial product.
10:56
Speaker 2: What do you have to fix on the kind of
10:58
Speaker 2: molecular level.
10:59
Speaker 4: I think the main thing is how do we separate
11:01
Speaker 4: out the indigo molecule away from all of the other things,
11:05
Speaker 4: all of the cells and all of the things that
11:06
Speaker 4: the cell is growing in. And so at the very beginning,
11:11
Speaker 4: a lot of our methods were very rudimentary, using you know,
11:15
Speaker 4: some off the shelf chemical engineering ways, and so that's
11:20
Speaker 4: why our first dye turned out a little bit green.
11:23
Speaker 4: And that's why kind of our first first hire was
11:27
Speaker 4: in a downstream processing engineer so that he could help
11:31
Speaker 4: us fix this problem.
11:33
Speaker 2: So the problem is, how do you get rid of
11:34
Speaker 2: everything that is not the indigo dye molecule, all the
11:39
Speaker 2: cells that made it, all the stuff that the cells
11:41
Speaker 2: were grown. You got to get rid of all that,
11:42
Speaker 2: but keep the dye. That's the first hard problem, exactly exactly.
11:46
Speaker 1: And then kind of pairing that, I think the other
11:49
Speaker 1: key unlock for us was also bringing in actual textile
11:54
Speaker 1: technical expertise, so no longer are we doing a visual
11:58
Speaker 1: test of is it blue or not? But now we
12:00
Speaker 1: can actually precisely quantify how green is it, how red
12:05
Speaker 1: is it relative to the amount of blue, and how
12:09
Speaker 1: close is that literally numerically compared to the synthetic standard
12:17
Speaker 1: that we want to be match up.
12:18
Speaker 2: So there's figuring it out at that level, and then
12:21
Speaker 2: there's figuring out how to make thousands of pounds of
12:27
Speaker 2: this die, right, which seems like a related but distinct
12:31
Speaker 2: problem that you've got to be solving sort of at
12:32
Speaker 2: the same time.
12:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
12:35
Speaker 4: So you know, like when Dunham Brands came a knocking,
12:40
Speaker 4: They're like, can you make a kilogram?
12:42
Speaker 3: I was like, absolutely not.
12:44
Speaker 4: And so one of the big limitations thus far in
12:50
Speaker 4: this field of synthetic biology is, Okay, so you can
12:53
Speaker 4: grow your microbe, you can grow it at larger scale,
12:56
Speaker 4: but how do we actually get the space to produce
13:00
Speaker 4: this at a large industrial scale over and over in
13:04
Speaker 4: a really repeatable way.
13:06
Speaker 3: And so for that you need really large scale equipment.
13:08
Speaker 2: How do you truly industrialized how do you make lots
13:12
Speaker 2: and lots of dye every day in a factory? For us?
13:15
Speaker 3: Exactly?
13:16
Speaker 4: And I think even that we with the growth of
13:20
Speaker 4: the synthetic biology industry, there's been a lot more demand
13:24
Speaker 4: and building out of these contract manufacturers where we can
13:29
Speaker 4: we don't have to build our own facility. We can
13:30
Speaker 4: kind of drop into an outsource facility and be able
13:34
Speaker 4: to make use of that infrastructure.
13:39
Speaker 2: Tammy and our team have now reached the point where
13:41
Speaker 2: they can in fact make not just one kilogram of dye,
13:44
Speaker 2: but hundreds of kilograms. Progress after the break, what they
13:49
Speaker 2: still have to figure out to get their die out
13:51
Speaker 2: into the real world. That's the end of the ads.
14:02
Speaker 1: Now we're going back to the show.
14:04
Speaker 2: So maybe for Michelle, Michelle, can you tell me just
14:08
Speaker 2: where's the company now? What are you making now? And
14:11
Speaker 2: like what can you not do yet that you need
14:13
Speaker 2: to do?
14:14
Speaker 1: M So, so maybe just taking a step back, I
14:18
Speaker 1: would say, you know, from back then when Tammy thought
14:22
Speaker 1: one killogram was too much, you know, I think we've
14:25
Speaker 1: really been able to step up in production every year
14:31
Speaker 1: as we've also refined and iterated on the process and
14:36
Speaker 1: the product. So you know, have gone from making just
14:40
Speaker 1: a couple of grams to a couple killograms to now,
14:45
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of kilograms, and we have an eye
14:48
Speaker 1: towards you know, metric tons, so thousands of kilograms, so
14:53
Speaker 1: that we can actually meet the industry in these needs, right,
14:56
Speaker 1: which is the tens of thousands of metric tons kind
14:59
Speaker 1: of level.
15:00
Speaker 2: And so when do you think you'll be able to
15:04
Speaker 2: make at a big enough scale that you can actually
15:06
Speaker 2: sell it to somebody who's going to make g means
15:09
Speaker 2: for me and the world.
15:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, so we are. We have been testing and
15:17
Speaker 1: trialing our product to make sure that we're approving kind
15:21
Speaker 1: of the iterations of the product and designing something that
15:24
Speaker 1: is truly drop in and usable for the denim industry.
15:28
Speaker 1: We are already working with brands that you know, I
15:32
Speaker 1: think listeners, you know and love.
15:37
Speaker 2: Can you say the name? Can you say one name
15:40
Speaker 2: of one brand?
15:41
Speaker 1: We cannot share the name uncorriginately.
15:44
Speaker 2: Okay, when do you think I can buy a pair
15:47
Speaker 2: of genes? Died with your die?
15:48
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to make any promises, but I
15:50
Speaker 1: would say, you know, in the next couple years.
15:54
Speaker 2: For sure, you just made a promise. I'll take it.
15:59
Speaker 1: You're right, that's true? Cut out the foresure. Yeah, No,
16:06
Speaker 1: I mean just to say, I think you know we
16:08
Speaker 1: are in you know, we're working collaboratively with the brands,
16:14
Speaker 1: and it's really a matter of our own capacity and
16:17
Speaker 1: scaling and then kind of bringing the cost down over
16:20
Speaker 1: time too, so that it can be something that continues
16:23
Speaker 1: to be more and more accessible to the broader fashion industry.
16:26
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the cost. Yeah, tell me about
16:29
Speaker 2: the economics of it.
16:31
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's one of the big goals of
16:35
Speaker 1: the business to make it write a success. You know,
16:38
Speaker 1: I would say, we're definitely not there yet right to
16:42
Speaker 1: your point, you know, probably and you know, order of
16:45
Speaker 1: magnitude of productivity away. In order to get there, you.
16:50
Speaker 2: Think it needs to be the same price as petrochemical dies.
16:56
Speaker 1: So what I would say on the kind of price
17:00
Speaker 1: side is I think we're making a bet that brands
17:06
Speaker 1: in the greater supply chain understand the big picture here
17:11
Speaker 1: and the opportunity is that, you know, luckily dies they
17:15
Speaker 1: can make this huge visual impact, but again they're only
17:19
Speaker 1: actually a very tiny fraction of what makes the garment itself.
17:25
Speaker 1: And so we believe there's a path to commercializing early
17:30
Speaker 1: even before we are cost neutral with the petrochemicals. But
17:35
Speaker 1: we can commercialize early to help build the business before
17:40
Speaker 1: we're there. At the cost side, because it just doesn't
17:43
Speaker 1: make a huge difference on the end price of the
17:47
Speaker 1: garment for example. Well as an example, it's like, are
17:50
Speaker 1: you willing to pay five dollars more for a pair
17:54
Speaker 1: of genes to help to facilitate that transition of the
17:58
Speaker 1: industry to better materials before it becomes cost neutral?
18:02
Speaker 2: And just to be clear, like five dollars more is
18:06
Speaker 2: when your die is how much more expensive that petrochemical
18:10
Speaker 2: based die.
18:12
Speaker 1: Five dollars more is like is like ten x more
18:18
Speaker 1: expensive chemical die.
18:20
Speaker 2: The die The die cost is a very small percentage
18:23
Speaker 2: of the overall cost of a paragenes exactly. Okay, So
18:27
Speaker 2: presumably there's like the sort of classic early adopter curve
18:31
Speaker 2: where there's a universe of people willing to pay more
18:36
Speaker 2: because they care or because they want to signal to
18:38
Speaker 2: people that they care whether they care or not. And
18:42
Speaker 2: those people will be your early adopters who will allow
18:44
Speaker 2: you to scale, and then you'll use that scale to
18:46
Speaker 2: become a cost neutral. That's the dream.
18:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so, I think we think about, you know,
18:53
Speaker 1: the Tesla model for this right where you see.
18:56
Speaker 2: Everybody loves the Tesla. Everybody, everybody who's not making software
19:01
Speaker 2: everybody who's making a physical thing.
19:03
Speaker 1: It is.
19:03
Speaker 2: It is really remarkable how that metaphor is the It's
19:08
Speaker 2: like it used to the uber but for X, but
19:10
Speaker 2: now it's Tesla. But literally yesterday I was talking to
19:14
Speaker 2: a guy who's doing that with houses. He's building these
19:16
Speaker 2: little backyard houses. Cover. The companies called Cover and they're
19:19
Speaker 2: building like really nice little backyard studio apartments. But they
19:23
Speaker 2: want to build houses and they want them to be cheaper,
19:26
Speaker 2: and it's a Tesla metaphor.
19:28
Speaker 1: It's like you go to the premium and you go
19:31
Speaker 1: down and it worked.
19:33
Speaker 2: And it worked for them. They did it. Are you
19:36
Speaker 2: working on other colors?
19:38
Speaker 1: You know, there's a broader platform and kind of opportunity
19:42
Speaker 1: here right to not just you know, disrupt denim, but
19:47
Speaker 1: also the fashion industry and food and cosmetics in all
19:52
Speaker 1: of these areas where color is infused into our daily lives.
19:57
Speaker 1: And so we're actually now taking our learnings from you know,
20:02
Speaker 1: bioengineering our first color product and looking at the broader
20:08
Speaker 1: kind of platform that we've developed and saying, how can
20:11
Speaker 1: we also create a broader palette that isn't kind of
20:16
Speaker 1: one color at a time, knowing that there are tens
20:20
Speaker 1: of thousands of different colors in use in these variety
20:24
Speaker 1: of industries today.
20:25
Speaker 2: Uh huh. Build a system that is more easily customizable
20:31
Speaker 2: so that you can get the cells to make whatever
20:34
Speaker 2: is the color of the season.
20:36
Speaker 1: That's right.
20:40
Speaker 2: In a minute, the lightning round with lots of questions
20:42
Speaker 2: about genes and genes as in denim. Now back to
20:53
Speaker 2: the show. Let's let's do a lightning round. Let me
20:58
Speaker 2: just ask you a bunch of questions before it's time
21:00
Speaker 2: to go. Oh gosh, Okay, they'll be different, they'll be
21:05
Speaker 2: simpler and more fun. Okay for either of you. Why
21:10
Speaker 2: are genes still almost always blue?
21:14
Speaker 4: Because I don't know if this is a very chicken
21:17
Speaker 4: and egg answer, but it's because it has to be
21:20
Speaker 4: made with indigo, and I think an indigo is blue.
21:24
Speaker 4: And indigo actually binds the yarns in such a way
21:27
Speaker 4: that you can kind of flake it off from the
21:31
Speaker 4: from the fabric, and you know, as you wear it,
21:34
Speaker 4: it takes the shape of you know, your body or
21:37
Speaker 4: you know, the wallet that you put in your back pocket.
21:40
Speaker 4: And it's really rare to have a dye that has
21:44
Speaker 4: these properties.
21:45
Speaker 2: I've seen numbers that seem wild for the number of
21:48
Speaker 2: jeans made in a year? Do you does either you
21:51
Speaker 2: know a true number for that?
21:54
Speaker 1: So our latest estimates are number of gens every year
21:58
Speaker 1: made is about two to four billion garments.
22:02
Speaker 2: Billion, Like that's billion. That's wild, right, Like yes, I
22:07
Speaker 2: mean what are we at for the world?
22:08
Speaker 1: Now?
22:09
Speaker 2: Eight billion people?
22:10
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that right?
22:11
Speaker 2: So it's like in a few years you have a
22:13
Speaker 2: pair of genes for every single man, woman, and child
22:16
Speaker 2: on earth.
22:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
22:19
Speaker 2: Okay, here's one for both of you. And I want
22:23
Speaker 2: you to try and answer at the same time. So
22:25
Speaker 2: I'm gonna ask the question and then I'm gonna say one, two, three,
22:28
Speaker 2: and then when I get to three, I want you
22:30
Speaker 2: to just give a yes or no answer. Can you
22:34
Speaker 2: wear a jean jacket with jeans? Yes?
22:37
Speaker 4: Or no?
22:38
Speaker 1: One?
22:38
Speaker 2: Two three?
22:39
Speaker 1: Yes? Oh, it's coming back. It's a trend that is
22:48
Speaker 1: coming back. Now, I'm telling.
22:49
Speaker 3: You that may be true. That may be true.
22:53
Speaker 2: Michelle, you came to hear from the business world. What
22:56
Speaker 2: do you know about science now that you didn't know
22:58
Speaker 2: when you started the company?
22:59
Speaker 1: Ooh, too much? I know. I know so much about science.
23:06
Speaker 1: I know enough to be dangerous to talk about by
23:09
Speaker 1: engineering and chemical engineering. And you know the bio manufacturing
23:16
Speaker 1: to be to be really dangerous. So just to say,
23:19
Speaker 1: you know, I think there's a lot of great science,
23:22
Speaker 1: a lot of great ideas out there, but actually, you know,
23:26
Speaker 1: I have a lot of respect for the chemical engineers
23:30
Speaker 1: and the folks who actually go from R and D
23:34
Speaker 1: to actually turn it into something that has a commercial
23:38
Speaker 1: case around it. And you know, we need to make
23:41
Speaker 1: those tough decisions and work on those optimization problems to
23:45
Speaker 1: actually get it to be something that's adaptable for the industry.
23:49
Speaker 2: So I just want to shout out your dog, who's
23:52
Speaker 2: really doing amazing work back over your shoulder. What kind
23:57
Speaker 2: of dog is it?
23:59
Speaker 1: She's a Congress Spaniel. This is one of her better days.
24:04
Speaker 1: She really loves showing her just just all sides of her.
24:10
Speaker 1: Let's say to the camera whenever I am on.
24:12
Speaker 2: Camera, what's her name? Her name's Daisy, Daisy Classic. Michelle
24:20
Speaker 2: Zou and Tammy Sue are the co founders of Hugh.
24:25
Speaker 2: Today's show was produced by Edith Russello. It was edited
24:28
Speaker 2: by Sarah Nix and Robert Smith and engineered by Amanda
24:32
Speaker 2: k Wong. I'm Jacob Goldstein. You can find me on
24:36
Speaker 2: Twitter at Jacob Goldstein, or you can email us at
24:39
Speaker 2: problem at Cushkin dot fm. We'll be back next week
24:43
Speaker 2: with another episode of What's Your Problem.