Scientific advisors include other academics, such as Stanford University's Fabian Pease, an expert in integrated circuits who is also well-versed in how to obtain grants from the Department of Defense and its DARPA research wing, said Knapp.
Cambrios recently received $1.8m (£0.99m) in early round venture funding from Arch Ventures, Alloy Ventures and Oxford Bioscience Partners and has begun to seek investors for a second round of funding. It also opened offices in Palo Alto.
The company's modus operandi can be likened to the old adage about throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks.
The first stage of the process involves creating billions of random genetic variants of a bacteriophage, or virus, that attacks the E. coli bacteria. "We morph the genetic material of a parasite of a bacteria," Knapp said. (Though E. coli is commonly associated with food poisoning, researchers like to work with it because it's fairly well understood. "It is the workhorse of the biomolecular world," Knapp said.)
Altering the genome in an individual bacteriophage causes the virus to produce a novel protein. "Each bacteriophage has one protein but there are billions of bacteriophages," Knapp said. Researchers then examine how this huge, lab-generated library of proteins interacts with a foreign substance, often different types of metals.
Because of the number of different viruses and their respective proteins, the protein-substance encounters are not set up as individual meetings. Instead, the inorganic material is brought into contact with all of the different proteins at once. The proteins that don't stick or react to the metal or other foreign substance are washed away. "Bonding is the first step in how to manipulate these systems," Knapp explained.
Subsequent experiments then winnow the field to the most interesting results. The end results are varied: the same inorganic material will produce different types of crystals with a change in proteins Creating new substances out of a reaction between a protein and a metal comes as a result of the catalytic process many observe in high school chemistry. The big difference, Knapp said, is that most people don't associate proteins with this process, just inorganic minerals and elements.
A second technique involves combining inorganic materials with variants of a tube-shaped virus, known as M13, that measures 880 nanometres long and 6 nanometres in diameter. Instead of trying to form a third substance, researchers look to see whether the inorganic materials will bond into a coating around the virus.
