Ginkgo Bioworks Acquires Microbial Innovation Firm AgBiome's Platform Assets

(RTTNews) - Ginkgo Bioworks (DNA), which is building the leading platform for cell programming and biosecurity, announced Thursday the acquisition of microbial innovation firm AgBiome, Inc.'s platform assets, including over 115,000 fully sequenced and isolated strains, over 500 million unique gene sequences, and relevant functional data and metadata, as well as AgBiome's development pipeline.

These assets will be integrated into Ginkgo Ag Biologicals Services, established with the acquisition of a Bayer agricultural biologicals R&D facility in 2022, and will expand Ginkgo's proprietary unified metagenomics database.

Combined, this creates one of the deepest and most advanced ag biological discovery and development platforms as well as a rich resource for the development of AI models for biological R&D.

Also included in the acquisition is a robust product concept pipeline including a dozen product candidates with greenhouse or field validation. These validated assets create a rich foundation for future partnered programs, as well as a diverse resource of metagenomic data for genomic mining and AI model training.