After collecting more than 10,000 microorganisms, startup Symbiotics targets bioinput market

Startup Symbiomics has announced that it intends to complete a collection of more than 10,000 microorganisms by the end of 2022.

By achieving this goal, agtech will become the owner of one of the world's largest collections of microorganisms.

In addition, the company is committed to developing solutions for the biopesticide, biofertilizer and voluntary carbon credit markets.

″By utilizing sequencing technologies, machine learning and gene editing tools, Symbiomics is developing a new class of high-performance biologics to sustainably improve crop productivity,″ the startup said.

″It is estimated that there are more than a trillion different microorganisms in the most diverse ecosystems on planet Earth, and some 99% of them remain unexplored by humans,″ it added.

Molecular biologist Mariana Ramos Leandro, Lead Research Scientist at Symbiomics, said that ″microbial biodiversity is very rich, especially in Brazilian biomes.″

Mariana Ramos Leandro, Lead Research Scientist at Symbiomics

″We travel to these different environments and collect the microorganisms associated, for example, with soils,″ explained Ramos Leandro, who has experience in isolating microorganisms that promote growth and tolerance to environmental stresses in plants.

The microorganism samples are collected and taken to the company’s laboratory to be cultured, isolated, identified and then stored in microbiological collections or biobanks.

Bioprospecting can also be performed in silico, through computational analyses of genomic sequences.

Through these analyses, researchers aim to associate stretches of microbial DNA with specific functions, to facilitate the development of biotechnological tools and products.

″This is only possible due to the large amounts of data generated from the sequencing of metagenomes and complete genomes of microorganisms and their analyses using bioinformatics,″ Ramos Leandro said.

In silico prospecting is considered a complementary strategy for investigating these microorganisms, due to the challenges associated with cultivating wild microorganisms in laboratories.

Most require specific adjustments in physicochemical and nutritional parameters for growth, which highlights the complexity involved in crop-dependent microbial studies.

Founded in 2020 by former students of the Federal University of Campinas (Unicamp), Symbiomics has focused on the biological input market, which is growing exponentially in Brazil and the rest of the world.

(Editing by Leonardo Gottems, reporter for AgroPages)