Associate Scientist - Protein Purification and Characterization Development (TE2)
Company: Ginkgo Bioworks
Location: Boston
Posted on: April 25, 2024
Job Description:
Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is
constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to
answer the globe's growing challenges in health, energy, food,
materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house
automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.
Ginkgo is a high-growth, well-capitalized public biotech company in
Boston that is redesigning the living world to solve some of the
globe's growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and
more. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living
world in order to answer the globe's growing challenges in health,
energy, food, materials, and more. Our mission to "make biology
easier to engineer" is poised to disrupt multiple industries by
leveraging our innovative data, automation, and scale in biological
engineering.
In order to support Ginkgo's mission of making biology easier to
engineer, the Protein Purification and Characterization (PPC) team
is seeking a motivated protein scientist with experience in protein
purification (recombinant proteins, enzymes, AAVs, VLPs,
antibodies) and related biochemical and biophysical
characterization for applications across a broad range of chemical
and pharmaceutical industries. The successful candidate will become
an integral part of Ginkgo's programs, supporting the use of
proteins in applications ranging from biosynthetic enzymes, food
proteins, therapeutics and others.
Responsibilities
- Science (Method and Assay Development)
- Apply knowledge of chemical, biochemical, and biophysical
principles to design methods and assays that can be executed in
high throughput to purify proteins and measure protein abundance,
function, and other properties
- Develop novel purification methods to purify enzyme and
non-enzyme proteins, protein nanoparticles (AAVs, VLPs), and
biologics (antibodies and antibody-variants) at low, medium, and
high throughput
- Develop novel automated high-throughput methods for protein
characterization based on electrophoresis, light-scattering,
blotting, etc. to assess protein purity and biophysical
characterization
- Provide expert guidance leveraging a deep understanding of
biological principles in optimizing soluble protein expression
through strain engineering, strain selection, small-scale
fermentation process and lysis optimization.
- Understand the impact of microbial growth and fermentation on
assays of interest and design small-scale fermentation conditions
that will be predictive of assay results at larger scales
- Design, execute, and analyze method development experiments to
demonstrate proof of principle of new methods, de-risk sources of
method interference or bias, optimize and validate the methods in
high-throughput workcells
- Science (Screen Execution)
- Execute screens in high-throughput using a suite of automated
instruments and integrated workcells, including liquid handlers,
microplate readers, mass spectrometers, HPLCs, high to
mid-dimensional screens, and others, working in high-density
microplate formats (384- and 1536-well plates)
- Coordinate with Core and Operations teams to support their work
in Screen Execution
- Use a variety of software packages and write scripts for
programming liquid handlers (in-house and third-party tools),
designing and viewing DNA sequences, processing data, and
performing statistical analysis (Spotfire, Python, JMP) laboratory
information management system (LIMS), database management (in-house
and third-party tools), and third-party lab instrumentation and
automation software
- Software
- Use a variety of software packages and write scripts for
programming liquid handlers (in-house and third-party tools),
designing and viewing DNA sequences, processing data, and
performing statistical analysis (Spotfire, Python, JMP) laboratory
information management system (LIMS), database management (in-house
and third-party tools), and third-party lab instrumentation and
automation software
- Data science, data management, and statistical analysis
- Use Spotfire to analyze and apply advanced statistical
techniques to method development experiments and executed
high-throughput screens, and upload these results in a structured,
standardized format into company databases
- Build robust applications capable of managing complex, large
volumes of data resulting in new biological insights
- Apply statistical Design of Experiment principles to design
assay optimization experiments and analyze the results to identify
optimal conditions for future experiments and screens
- Automation
- Establish understanding of automated liquid handlers (Hamilton
Star series, Prime, Echo, Tempest, FPLC, HPLC, Lynx) to be able to
create and execute new liquid handling procedures and independently
troubleshoot errors that arise during execution
- Understand and incorporate the constraints of automated liquid
handlers into experiment and procedure design, and understand how
different instruments may introduce bias into experimental data
- Project scoping/planning/sales
- Work with Commercial teams in planning and scoping new
projects, meet with potential and current customers to understand
their needs, and propose both standardized and bespoke solutions to
their problems, review proposals, and plan project timelines in
alignment with customer requirements and milestone deadlines
- Project management
- Within a project, work with the project leader to coordinate on
strategic elements of the project that may impact, but are not
necessarily within the scope of work of, HTS. This can include
strategic components of genetic design, protein engineering, cell
transformation, analytical chemistry teams, and
fermentation
- In some cases, may serve as project lead for internal
development projects or projects that heavily lean on HTS
capabilities
- Communication
- Communicate to a broad range of stakeholders, including
providing detailed technical communications to scientific
stakeholders and high-level, abstracted, accessible communications
to leadership, executive, and external audiences, including
customers
Minimum Requirements
- Typically requires a Bachelor's degree and a minimum of 2 years
of related experience; or an advanced degree without experience; or
equivalent work experience.
- Demonstrated experience in protein engineering, protein
purification or protein biochemistry. Hands on experience in
chromatography and non-chromatography based protein purification
methods and method optimization
- Demonstrated ability to deliver results while working
independently as a laboratory scientist
Preferred Capabilities and Experience
- Established capability to design, conduct, optimize, and
execute novel analytical assay development efforts in the lab
supporting HTS and project deliverables.
- Experience developing methods and assays for molecular
interactions, protein modifications, protein stability, protein
binding and/or biophysical techniques & approaches (e.g., SPR, BLI,
DSF, CD, etc.)
- Experience with automated liquid handlers eg. FPLC, HPLC,
TECAN, Hamilton, Lynx etc
- Understanding of microbial metabolism and physiology
- Experience using laboratory automation equipment
- Experience in computational analysis of biological data and
large data sets using general-purpose programming languages (such
as Python, R, or Matlab)
- Familiarity with software and statistical platforms for
documenting (ELN) and analyzing large data sets (e.g., JMP,
Spotfire, or MODDE pro/DoE)
- Ability to clear and concisely present technical information to
audiences of broad stakeholders
To learn more about Ginkgo, visit www.ginkgobioworks.com/press/ or
check out some curated press below:
- What is it really like to take your company public via a SPAC?
One Boston biotech shares its journey (Fortune)
- Ginkgo Bioworks resizes the definition of going big in biotech,
raising $2.5B in a record SPAC deal that weighs in with a whopping
$15B-plus valuation (Endpoints News)
- Ginkgo Bioworks CEO on scaling up Covid-19 testing: 'If we try,
we can win' (CNBC)
- Ginkgo raises $70 million to ramp up COVID-19 testing for
employers, universities (Boston Globe)
- Ginkgo Bioworks Redirects Its Biotech Platform to Coronavirus
(Wall Street Journal)
- Ginkgo Bioworks Provides Support on Process Optimization to
Moderna for COVID-19 Response (PRNewswire)
- The Life Factory: Synthetic Organisms From This $1.4 Billion
Startup Will Revolutionize Manufacturing (Forbes)
- Synthetic Bio Pioneer Ginkgo Raises $290 Million in New Funding
(Bloomberg)
- Ginkgo Bioworks raises $350 million fund for biotech spinouts
(Reuters)
- Can This Company Convince You to Love GMOs? (The Atlantic)
We also feel that it's important to point out the obvious here -
there's a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs
to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply
committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its
practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our
culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work
with people from all walks of life.
We're developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we
must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can - and will
- impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is
used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best
chance that it's something we'll be proud of as it continues to
grow. Therefore, it's critical that we incorporate the diverse
voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of
biology.
It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment
opportunities to all employees, employment applicants, and EOE
disability/vet.
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Keywords: Ginkgo Bioworks, Boston , Associate Scientist - Protein Purification and Characterization Development (TE2), Other , Boston, Massachusetts
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