{"id":83137,"title":"Ligo Biosciences - Generative enzyme design for the chemical industry","tagline":"Next generation deep-learning enzyme models for cheaper and sustainable chemical manufacturing. ","body":"**Tl;dr:**\n\n* [Ligo](https://www.ligo.bio/) is using deep learning to design **novel enzymes** to make **chemical manufacturing** cheaper and more sustainable.\n* The three founders met in a synbio lab at **Oxford University** where they decided to take on the **$6 trillion chemicals industry.**\n* Sign up for our [**waitlist**](https://foil-barometer-dc9.notion.site/Ligo-Biosciences-Technical-Waitlist-63a62e2b0f4a4b8dbaa31ce51b572d09?pvs=74) (Big news soon!)\n\n# **The Team:**\n\nHey - we are Ed, Emily, and Arda! We are building Ligo.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=83137\u0026key=user_uploads/1373049/1cde2313-c3fb-4cc4-a836-3dd991f69ae9)\n\n👨🏻‍⚕️CEO, [**Ed**](https://linkedin.com/in/edward-harris-537837188) — Ed studied **CS at Princeton** before transferring to **Oxford Medical School,** where he worked across three top synthetic biology labs. Ed bootstrapped his first startup at 19 in the food markets of Guadalajara, Mexico, and took it to **$1M in annual revenue.**\n\n👩‍🔬CSO, [**Emily**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-egerton-warburton-a70121211/) — Emily is a top **biochemist** from **Oxford University** who honed her wet lab skills in the intensive environment of biotech startups. Working on everything from bacterial **biofuel** production to **vaccine design**, Emily is **happiest with a pipette in hand**!\n\n👨‍💻CTO, [**Arda**](https://linkedin.com/in/arda-g-a26506118) — Arda studied **cell and systems biology** at **Oxford,** where he became a **Google Cloud Research Innovator** for his work in computational biology. Arda’s obsession with deep learning for biomolecular design began when the original AlphaFold paper was released.\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n---\n\n## ❌ **The problem**:\n\n**(1) The $6 trillion chemicals industry is flawed:**\n\n* This industry produces **_20% of industrial greenhouse gases_** and is responsible for **_15% of global energy usage_.**\n* Traditional chemical manufacturing relies on hazardous materials and produces **_huge amounts of waste,_** resulting in **high costs.**\n* **You** unknowingly contribute to this problem by personally using **\\~160 of these chemicals daily.**\n\n**(2) Enzymes offer an amazing solution, but they are hard to develop**\n\n* Enzymes are biological catalysts. They accelerate reactions at mild temperatures and pressures, making chemical manufacturing **cheaper, faster, and more sustainable.**\n* **Major pharmaceutical companies** already use enzymes for manufacturing a limited number of drugs but developing them costs **tens of millions of dollars** and takes **multiple years.**\n* Current enzyme engineering approaches are **limited** because they must start from an enzyme that already exists.\n* No models currently understand the principles of catalysis, resulting in a narrow range of possible reactions that can be catalysed.\n\n## ✅ **Our Solution: Enzymes Designed From Scratch**\n\n* We are building **foundational enzyme design models** that learn from huge amounts of data to **understand the principles of catalysis.**\n* The model **generates structures capable of catalysing reactions** directly from transition state models, meaning we will **expand the number of reactions that can feasibly be accelerated** using enzymes.\n* These enzymes can catalyse reactions to **synthesise high-value chemicals** used in the pharmaceutical, agriculture, and consumer goods industries.\n\n[Our Diffusion Model](https://youtu.be/_V758AisYS8)\n\n# **Partnerships:**\n\nWe are happy to announce two key partnerships.\n\n* [**Basecamp Research**](https://www.basecamp-research.com) is on track to have **1000x more sequence diversity than public resources** - We are collaborating to use their data to improve our soon-to-be-released OpenSource model (sign up [here](https://foil-barometer-dc9.notion.site/Ligo-Biosciences-Technical-Waitlist-63a62e2b0f4a4b8dbaa31ce51b572d09?pvs=74)!).\n* [**Adaptyv Bio**](https://www.adaptyvbio.com) is building a next-generation protein foundry. Their engineers, Liza and Igor, are helping to build the **data pipeline for OpenSource model** using their state-of-the-art **bioinformatics tool, ProteinFlow.**\n\n# **We’d Love Your Help**❤️\n\n* Sign up for our [waitlist](https://foil-barometer-dc9.notion.site/Ligo-Biosciences-Technical-Waitlist-63a62e2b0f4a4b8dbaa31ce51b572d09?pvs=74) (Big news soon!)\n* We’d love intros to:\n  * Small chemical companies in pharmaceuticals, fragrances, food\u0026drink, detergents\n  * Big Pharma and Agricultural chemical companies\n  * **Any** **other biotech** companies! Email us [ed@ligo.bio](mailto:ed@ligo.bio)","slug":"Lcv-ligo-biosciences-generative-enzyme-design-for-the-chemical-industry","created_at":"2024-08-16T21:11:49.384Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T00:21:03.850Z","total_vote_count":470,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Lcv-ligo-biosciences-generative-enzyme-design-for-the-chemical-industry","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=83137\u0026key=user_uploads/1373049/1cde2313-c3fb-4cc4-a836-3dd991f69ae9","company":{"id":29412,"name":"Ligo Biosciences","slug":"ligo-biosciences","url":"https://www.ligo.bio","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/bd381079ddb420940e9b57512009e6b5bc73e27a.png","batch":"Summer 2024","industry":"Healthcare","tags":["Artificial Intelligence","Deep Learning","Synthetic Biology","Biotech","Climate"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/29412"}}