Meet Adam Clore, IDT’s Synthetic Biology Veteran

Emerging Technologies
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September 5, 2017

SynBioBeta was delighted to sit down and speak with IDT’s Technical Director of Synthetic Biology, Adam Clore, to learn more details about his background, IDT and the future for tools and technology.

SynBioBeta: Can you tell us a little bit about your background – academically and professionally?

Adam: I grew up in Iowa and I did my undergraduate work at the University of Northern Iowa, just a small school near where I grew up. Afterwards, I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to do, so I took a job here at IDT where I had ordered a total of two oligos for my undergraduate lab work and I got on into the research group. So, I started right out from my undergrad here at IDT. I worked in the research group for a couple of years and got the basics and decided I wanted to go for my graduate school. I went to Portland State University, we had started working here at IDT with some hyperthermic organisms and enzymes from there, so I originally went to Portland to study hyperthermophiles and started working with Kenneth Stedman, studying acid hot springs, like Yellowstone. I studied a lot of the acidophiles and the hyperthermophiles and virus for my PhD and I finished that up in 2008. I noticed there was an opening back at IDT kind of working as a liaison between the research group and a lot of the collaborators, and the high valued technical customers they were working with. I kind of had a foot in the door with research and support and collaborating with who we were working with. This evolved over time with me working with some of the Genes group at the time, which evolved into the Synthetic Biology group that we have here at IDT with the introduction of gBlocks that I helped develop and test. That’s where my current role lies as the Technical Director of Synthetic Biology, I work with the group that both researches and develops new products. I also work very closely with the product managers to come up with the new products that we are going to put into the research line. I act as the face of Synthetic Biology for IDT, which consists of talking about our products and setting up new collaborations.

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gBlocks® Gene Fragments are double-stranded, sequence-verified genomic blocks for easy gene construction or modification, applications such as antibody research and CRISPR-mediated genome editing, use as qPCR standards, and more. Source: IDT

SynBioBeta: What do you enjoy most in your typical day at IDT?

Adam: I think that the thing that I enjoy the most is really reaching out and setting up new collaborations and new partnerships. We have a lot of customers who just order from us for day to day things, they order a couple oligos here and a couple gBlocks there and that’s great. It’s the bedrock of our company. We’ve tried to reach out and partner with a lot of the thought-leaders and innovators who are really moving things forward and pushing the envelope. Trying to work with them as partners as much as customers to help them develop their new products and technologies. I think that is one of the most rewarding things, getting to know a lot of these innovative companies, a lot of which are present at SynBioBeta, places where a lot of the cutting-edge work is going on. I feel lucky to meet with a lot of diverse groups and companies, and I think working with those exciting people is why I really like working with IDT.

SynBioBeta: IDT was founded in 1987, and since you’ve started your career at IDT until present day – can you talk about how DNA synthesis has changed since you’ve started?

Adam: So, it’s changed a lot, I think about it in two different ways. There is oligo synthesis, which is just basically a chemical reaction taking place and then there is synthetic biology and gene synthesis, which relies on a multi step process of enzymology based assembly, amplification and error correction. Since I’ve started at IDT, both have changed dramatically. So, with oligos when I started, we were using our first generation of home-made synthesizers. Each one was capable of synthesizing four fragments of DNA which were manually loaded with columns each time. So, each oligo that we made was manually loaded onto these and we would do four of them at a time all day long. Jump to present day, we are on the 3rd generation of synthesizing which is capable of synthesizing 768 oligos at one time. It is completely automated. It has moved from a very manual process that was low-throughput to a process that is extremely high-throughput. It has allowed us to change the output of a few hundred oligos a day to an output where we have anywhere from 70,000-80,000 oligos a day that are manufactured and shipped out. It’s really made possible with the synthetic biology aspect of it as well: the process of assembly uses oligos to assemble into genes or gBlocks which are larger double stranded fragments. To do that, we need a tremendous amount of oligos. IDT is actually one of its own largest customers for oligos, we use more than our customers do and we use those to build all the gBlocks and genes that we are making. There is a very complex mixture of steps that go on there. It’s not just a linear process of synthesizing and finishing and being done. There are multiple checkpoints, that if that synthesis fails, we can start over or back up a few steps and go from there. It’s a much more complicated manufacturing process. It’s also a much harder process to predict.

SynBioBeta: Being based in Iowa, I wouldn’t consider it one of the large biotech areas in the US but overall globally an important player. What are some of the advantages of being based in Coralville? How has the location impacted business and culture for the company?

Adam: Great question. It’s really by chance that we started here. Our founder Dr. Joseph Walder, was a faculty member at the University of Iowa, which was his reason for being here. He started IDT after developing a patent for a blood substitute. The revenue from that patent allowed him to start a contract research organization. He quickly realized the ups and downs of contract research and wanted a more consistent line of revenue as well as out to help a larger audience of scientists and academics, and that is where the emerging field of oligo synthesis was where he began his work. It was always at the heart of the type of research he was doing. It eventually got large enough and broke off from the university and he started working at IDT full-time making oligos. That’s kind of how we started here in the Midwest.We’ve kind of stayed in the Midwest for several reasons, one of them being economics. The cost of land and just about everything is much cheaper than the Bay Area or Cambridge. The other thing, there is a great wealth of talent here in the Midwest. We have the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, which are both very close to IDT, so we get a bunch of recruits who work both in the plants and in oligo synthesis. There is a large group out near Northwestern in Chicago as well.We’ve also seen some drawbacks being here, though. It’s never near any conferences and we are kind of isolated from people. We’ve rectified this by expanding into different areas. We have a facility on the west coast where we produce oligos very rapidly to get those to people on the west coast. We’ve purchased property in Research Triangle, to do the same thing on the east coast. Also, we just opened a Research and Development office in Redwood City and the idea there is to have an area where we can attract Bay Area talent, and work hand-in-hand with the thought leaders and work on collaborations which might be a little harder than here in the Midwest. We’ve tried to maintain what has given us the advantage here in the Midwest, but still expand to have access to all the great minds that are over in the Bay Area as well.

SynBioBeta: What do you think the future holds for tools and technology? In your opinion, what is the most exciting?

Adam: I think that one of the most exciting things that we’ve seen are the tremendous advancements in reading and writing DNA, and of course, reading DNA came along a lot quicker than writing. It’s not much of a surprise though, that it’s a lot easier to read a book than to write a book. I think some of the predictions to get writing down to the price that reading is at are a bit overly hopeful. I don’t see a crash in the market as far as pricing goes, but what I do see is a real synergy with the different parts of synthetic biology. If you look at DNA design, optimization, and building very large and complex circuits out of DNA in biology, one of the hardest things to do is connect these fields that are still separate. It’s hard to bring together a lot of the disciplines that are needed to design the DNA sequences that are going to work, create control regions, along with doing large scale screening and tuning to bring those things together. working alongside purification experts on the downstream side of things who will be working with the final products that are coming out of these circuits. The nature of these types of products are they span to individual labs. Having these tools that are allowing us to collaborate and maintain massive projects across different disciplines, labs, and companies is kind of the next step. I think we will see a lot more alignment of things right now that are still siloed into separate areas. I believe that will be the biggest advantage over the next couple of years. I don’t mean to downplay advantages in DNA synthesis, as it’s our bread and butter. It’s what we are working towards and there are a ton of other innovative companies like Twist Bioscience and GeneArt that are all working on pushing the envelope on things. But I think really pulling together the disciplines is what will allow for large advancements in how we do things. In June, IDT launched the Synthetic Biology Grant Program, which aims to empower the next generation of world-changing companies seeking to make a positive impact in the fields of human health, sustainable manufacturing, or humanitarian causes.Want to learn more about Adam or IDT? Be sure to register for SynBioBeta SF 2017, where Adam will be speaking on the DNA Panel alongside other exciting industry leaders.

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