Lumen Bioscience Hacks Spirulina to Generate Biologics

The history of the biotechnology industry pivots off breakthroughs in genetic engineering. The first major leap was in the 1970s with E. coli, which laid the groundwork for the creation of Genentech and is still a workhorse of biotech today. Then, in the 1980s, mammalian cell engineering was cracked, enabling the manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies, which set the stage for enormously successful companies like Amgen. More recently, in the 1990s, an equally valuable set of patents came out with the ability to engineer yeast, which is now being used to generate all sorts of industrial biologics, like laundry detergent enzymes.