Ginkgo Bioworks and Phytolon have completed the first development milestone of their partnership, achieving the full colour palette of the yellow-to-purple spectrum.

Phytolon's natural betalain pigments, produced through fermentation-based technologies, offer safe, sustainable alternatives to synthetic dyes, which addresses growing regulatory concerns and consumer demand for natural products.

Ginkgo’s expertise enhanced the efficiency of Phytolon's yeast strains, ensuring the consistent and robust production of sustainable food colours via two producing strains.

Ginkgo and Phytolon’s partnership, which began in early 2022, aimed to produce vibrant betalain pigments spanning the entire yellow-to-purple spectrum using cell engineering. The successful completion of the project’s first milestone unlocks the commercial potential of Phytolon's yellow-to-purple palette and further establishes the cost-efficient offering to its clients.

Phytolon’s natural betalain pigments can be used throughout the food industry as safe, sustainable and viable alternatives to artificial dyes. As governments around the world continue to intensify regulations on synthetic dyes, it is likely that manufacturers and consumers will increasingly seek out more sustainable and nature-derived products.

Tal Zeltzer, co-founder and CTO of Phytolon, said: “We are so excited to reach this key milestone with our partner, Ginkgo Bioworks. This achievement puts our colours at the forefront to efficiently replace artificial dyes in our food and create a healthy and sustainable world. Our clients are now able to explore high-performing natural colours in their brands, covering the full range from purple to pink, red, orange and yellow shades.”

Kevin Madden, SVP of commercialisation at Ginkgo Bioworks, added: “We are thrilled to see our collaboration with Phytolon accelerate, and we’re proud to be a driving force behind the realisation of this milestone and the R&D breakthroughs it represents. Ginkgo Natural Product Services have enabled Phytolon’s products to be competitive worldwide and create a broader palette of options for the industry.”

He continued: “We're happy to be able to provide innovators like Phytolon with our services and give access to our codebase to accelerate their product development. As we celebrate this success, we look forward to sustaining this momentum to further enhance the performance of Phytolon’s products.”

Following the successful completion of the partnership’s first milestone, Phytolon says it soon expects to bring the full colour palette enabled by these two new strains to market.

Ginkgo and Phytolon will continue to work together under their existing agreement toward achieving additional milestones that further increase production efficiency.

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