Robots And Microbes: Zymergen Raises $44 Million From Big VCs

The two biology experts--one a biophysicist, one a biochemist--were studying microbes, the single-cell organisms found all over the planet, to see how they could be used as building blocks to produce new renewable materials. Sick of how slow the typical process can be, testing 10 ideas or so a month, they looked to robots to speed up their painstaking lab process at Amyris.