Natalie Kuldell (00:02):
Hi there, Ben.
Ben Steil (00:04):
Hi, Natalie. Nice to see you.
Natalie Kuldell (00:06):
It’s great to see you. Thank you for joining for this conversation. You have a very interesting job now and I’m excited to have you just tell more people about it. So do you wanna start with where you work and what company you’re with and what you do there?
Ben Steil (00:25):
Yeah, sure. So I’m at Daicel Arbor Biosciences. We are in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We are maybe a mid-sized biotech company. My role is mostly on product development doing R and D, but I’ve also in my time here managed a couple different products that are all based around either our DNA synthesis technology or our cell-free protein expression technology, which is called my TXTL, which some of you may have heard of.
Natalie Kuldell (00:54):
Yeah. And, and, you know, folks who are gonna go onto the BioBuilderClub will actually get their hands on these materials, which is super cool. So yeah, R and D maybe you can unpack those that acronym a little bit and what it means for your day to day.
Ben Steil (01:12):
Yeah. So here, you know, that’s research and development, so that can be applied to either new product ideas or also new ways of manufacturing our current products to make the manufacturing more efficient and cheaper more robust, maybe more resilient to supply chain demands like we experienced with the COVID lockdowns and also just meeting with other colleagues to come up with new ideas. And
Natalie Kuldell (01:43):
It’s amazing. Yeah. I’m sorry.
Ben Steil (01:46):
And occasionally we put out new products around these R and D projects.
Natalie Kuldell (01:51):
Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it’s it’s science. So the research part it’s process engineering that the, the development part, it sounds collaborative and innovative and, and you know, maybe people are a little surprised that all that happens within an industry setting which is where you’re working. Did you have thoughts about working in industry versus academia when, you know, you were making some career decisions?
Ben Steil (02:18):
Sure, I, I definitely did. I think after my PhD, the first thing I went into was a nonprofit vaccine company, which is almost kind of a bridge between research and industry, because there was a lot of research going on, but it was also very focused on actually producing a product. And then the, the company I’m at now, I mean, you know, it’s a spinoff from a university, so our two co-founders are, were a postdoc and then his mentor. So they are very much academic at heart. So it is, it’s not really that much of a stretch to come to an industry job like this because they are still very research minded and it fits pretty well because you get to do the kind of the academic side and then you also get to do the industry side.
Natalie Kuldell (03:04):
Yeah. I, I think that’s a little surprising to people that that industry can still feel very academic and, and discovery oriented that they, that growth and, and new ideas and directions are still a big part of the industry. That’s great. So, wow. So you mentioned your PhD, but that was almost certainly not your first degree. So, so <laugh> yeah. Where, where did you say go to high school and, and were you interested in science then? How’d, you know you wanted to do science?
Ben Steil (03:34):
Sure. I, I grew up in Minnesota as I grew up being outdoors a lot, being at the, in the lakes, being in the woods and really developed an interest, probably just the outdoors and, and by that kind of the science of life, and both my brothers went into college with biology degrees. I went in thinking I was gonna get a biology major and then switched to chemistry, but it really wasn’t too different.
Natalie Kuldell (04:01):
<Laugh> I always say biology is chemistry and chemistry isphysics and physics is math. So yes, it, it is all connected.
Ben Steil (04:07):
It’s all related. So yeah. Chemistry track was a little more challenging. I think I liked that better. And then from there, I went to do a PhD at the university of Colorado in Denver, and that was in their microbiology and immunology program, or actually worked on cell-free systems also, but it was a cell-free system based on HeLa cells, which are human cancer cells. Yeah. And those were used to replicate polio virus RNA.
Natalie Kuldell (04:37):
Interesting.
Ben Steil (04:38):
Or you can take the RNA, drop it in and you can get virus out. Although that wasn’t my goal. So yeah, the most part I was not making that,
Natalie Kuldell (04:44):
But yeah, that’s, that’s probably worth just spending a, a minute or two on, since it is. So integrated both into your, your training and also the work that you do, just to say a little bit about TXTL and, and cell-free extracts and what, what they are and what they can be used for. I’m not sure. It’s commonly known.
Ben Steil (05:03):
Yeah. cell-free extracts are extremely useful in the sense that you don’t have to worry about keeping what’s in your tube alive because there’s no cells, there’s no, you know, other organisms, it is basically you take the guts out of either a bacterium or a, a human cell line and you take out the ribosomes and the machinery used for transcription to make RNA from your DNA. And then the ribosomes do the translation. You have your tRNAs in there and they assemble the polypeptides and it’s a very useful system because you can make proteins with that system kind of on demand. You can add things to the system without having to worry about it, killing the living organism, and you can make toxic proteins, for example proteins that would be toxic to the host, not necessarily toxic to people that’s an important distinction,
Natalie Kuldell (05:59):
The cells won’t like. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Ben Steil (06:02):
Yeah. But yeah, it’s a very powerful system because all you have to do is either drop in a DNA or RNA template and you’re ready to go and you can make your protein and analyze it, or even make virus if you want to.
Natalie Kuldell (06:14):
Yeah, no, it it’s, it’s such a fascinating system and, and, you know so useful for prototyping novel cells and, you know, novel genetic circuits and, and used in a lot of ways. So yeah, I think, I think it’s it’s, it’s a platform technology, which is you know, it’s a tool for, for research, for discovery, for manufacturing, all those things. So, so cool. Yeah. but you probably did not expect to be working in it. You know, did you have different expectations about where you were thinking you would be heading and how you landed, where you currently are?
Ben Steil (06:51):
I think in grad school, I thought I was gonna go like the professor route, you know, be writing grants and stuff. But I think in, in my experience in the academic life I had is that I just learned that writing grants was extremely time consuming. It is very, very competitive. It’s probably for some people, but I decided it wasn’t for me. And so I tried to find jobs like an R and D job where I’m not just doing manufacturing, you know, I kind of still do my thinking and troubleshooting that I learned how to do in a PhD program. And I still get to do that level of thinking. So I’m not, I’m not just a cog and a wheel, so to speak.
Natalie Kuldell (07:37):
Yeah.
Ben Steil (07:38):
I don’t have to write grants.
Natalie Kuldell (07:39):
Yeah. Well, lucky <laugh>
Ben Steil (07:43):
I get to partake in them sometimes.
Natalie Kuldell (07:45):
Yeah. Even better. Yeah. The that, that scientific thinking is, is really addictive. Once you get started on it, right. This notion that you can have, you know, data in front of you and analyze it and, and come up with an idea about what’s going on and then test it. And, you know, you just, I, I think that for people who find research as, as a path for them or something that aligns with their, their spirit, it’s really, it’s a, it’s a very fun way to spend your day and your career is sleuthing stuff out, right? So, um that’s great. So did you have somebody along the way that, that helped you sort of along or gave you great advice? I just, I like to just have people share what they have learned rather than have everybody, you know, relearn it for themselves.
Ben Steil (08:35):
Sure. I would probably say my graduate student mentor was great. I really learned from him to kind of reduce problems to their simplest components and then figure out from those components, you know, if you’re troubleshooting something, which, which is the squeaky wheel, basically.
Natalie Kuldell (08:53):
Yeah. That, that is, that is a real talent, is to reduce the problem to, you know, bite size chunks and then yeah. Figure out which, which of those is the, the issue very very valuable learning for sure, for sure. And I, you and I have gotten to know each other because we are, are working on a, a grant together to get some of the kits from Daicel Arbor out to students around the country. Do you have a, a, a, I don’t know, a goal in education or additional sort of thinking about what you’d like to see in education at large, because now, now that we’re working together, we, we have a chance to do, do some good. What, what kind of good would you like to see then?
Ben Steil (09:39):
I mean, I’d love to see, you know, high school students exposed earlier on to the more advanced things we are actually doing in industry these days because products such as our TXDL system are really, actually, simple to use. And it is certainly something very amenable to being used in classrooms and can provide a lot of education and mind opening maybe to different career paths that people probably aren’t thinking of right now, but are no doubt gonna be a big part of our future economy, I think.
Natalie Kuldell (10:12):
I could not agree more. I think we underestimate what high school students, generally we underestimate what high school students are, are capable of, and that if we raise the ceiling and give them authentic experiences in science, they will absolutely rise to that occasion. And light a fire for, for pursuing this. And it is a great career as you have shown. Right. You know, you’re, you’re doing amazing stuff. Well, thank you for taking time to share it with our students. If there are questions I will pass along to you, but I do appreciate your your, your sharing your story.
Ben Steil (10:48):
Sounds good. Thank you, Natalie.