Ep11. Arda Goreci, Edward Harris, Ligo Biosciences

They dropped out of Oxford, got into Y Combinator, and now they’re building an AI tool that could reshape the enzyme industry.Ligo Biosciences is a startup building generative deep learning models to design enzymes - nature’s powerful catalysts that make chemical reactions faster, cheaper, and more sustainable. Ligo’s mission is to design new enzymes to expand their use throughout the chemical industry. Currently, most enzymes are engineered using “directed evolution,” a Nobel Prize-winning but labor-intensive method that mimics natural selection in the lab. It involves mutating DNA sequences, testing thousands of variants, and gradually refining the results. The process can take months and cost millions.Ligo wants to change that. “AI lets us skip the guesswork,” Ed says. Instead of random mutations, their models should be able to simulate, predict, and design enzyme structures.Ligo’s breakout moment didn’t come from a product launch, it came from a stand on open science. When DeepMind released AlphaFold3 without sharing the source code in Nature, Ligo took matters into their own hands. They rebuilt the model and published it openly online. In this time they also found errors that prevented reproducibility and were quick to connect with the scientific community over the fact that this was the reason it is so important to publish the code. The move sparked a wave of support from the scientific community, drew investor attention, and went viral. The team reflects on their journey so far, the opportunities Silicon Valley unlocked, and how they’re leveraging AI to solve real-world problems.Ligo Website: https://www.ligo.bio/Ligo Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ligo-biosciences/posts/?feedView=allSustainable Times Website: https://www.sustainabletimes.co.uk/Contact: [email protected]