CEO Dan Widmaier at Business of Fashion VOICES
about 4 years ago – Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 02:35:15 PM

In November, Bolt’s Founder and CEO, Dan Widmaier, spoke at Business of Fashion VOICES. The annual event is an invite-only gathering of top fashion brands and trailblazing entrepreneurs who are challenging conventional wisdom about the fashion industry.

Dan announced the exciting news that Mylo™ material now has the ability to scale globally. That means our alternative to animal and synthetic leather has the real potential to powerfully impact the fashion industry, forever changing its landscape and how we approach material innovation.

Marching forward towards our goal of scaling Mylo™ globally, Bolt is on track to produce 1 million square feet of Mylo™ this year, thereby forging the path to create 10 times that amount in the years to follow.

We are excited to share that Mylo™ Driver Bag products are included in that 1 million square feet for 2020 delivery. Watch Dan's full talk:

Meet the Team - Edyta Szewczyk, PhD
about 4 years ago – Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 03:28:15 PM

In this series of updates, we profile some of the team that’s working on bringing Mylo™ material to life. These are the mycologists, fungal geneticists, process engineers, and designers who are working day in and day out to grow and design the world’s first mycelium-based bag.

Part 3: Edyta Szewczyk, PhD, Senior Scientist in Biology

Edyta is a fungal geneticist and a strain engineer at Bolt. She works with the organism that Bolt uses as the foundation for Mylo™, and creates a genetic map that tells us what gene corresponds to what characteristic of the fungus. On many levels, she is the one who is most familiar with the organism, having dissected and analyzed it down to a microscopic and genetic level.

Edyta’s fascination and love for fungi started early. As a child growing up in Poland, she saw the bioluminescent Honey Mushroom growing on a tree in her parents’ backyard, and she never looked back.

“Mushrooms were always a giant part of my life - harvesting mushrooms, foraging from my childhood. I learned how to recognize the edible and non-edible mushrooms early on, and I always knew there’s something special about mushrooms. My brother became an astronomer, and my family jokes that he looks at the stars through a telescope, and I look at microorganisms through a microscope.”

How did you get started in genetics?

“I always wanted to study botany, because I was fascinated with plants. I had a natural ability to recognize species, even from ancient drawings, I would recognize the plant and remember its Latin name. Every time I moved to a different country, I would learn all about the local plants. Eventually, I became interested in lichens - they are a symbiosis between plants and fungi. They were very mysterious, not much was known, and people would constantly change theories about them.

In the fourth year of high school, genetics caught my attention because it was very scientific. To me, zoology, botany, and physiology felt very like descriptive sciences. Genetics, on the other side, is very strict. There is no argument of whether it’s true or not, you can just prove it. So I decided to study genetics.

One of the coolest parts about fungi is that they are surprisingly similar to animals, and humans even. So much so that some of the pathways for making certain molecules are similar in fungi and animals. Many fungi make natural molecules that can affect human physiology including immune modulators, psychoactive compounds, and antibiotics. It is hypothesized that the neuro-active ones evolved to increase the dispersal of spores by attracting mammals to eat the mushroom. An example is a molecule called anandamide that is produced by truffles. This molecule has natural mood-enhancing activity because it is compatible with the cannabinoid receptors in the human brain, the same receptors that are responsible for the effect of THC derived from marijuana plants. Just like with THC, anandamide triggers the release of mood-enhancing chemicals in humans, but the amounts are so tiny that humans don’t feel its effects after eating truffles.”

How would you explain fungal genetics to somebody with no experience in biology?

“Every organism, including fungi, contains genetic code, which is a template for every aspect of the organism’s life. A fungal geneticist can decipher that code, see what part of the template corresponds to what function. They can also compare it to other similar organisms and find similarities and differences. Then, they go on to see if they can modify the genetic code to alter the function of the organism.

Like many scientists, I started in academia, but the type of work I do evolved as I moved into the industry. When I was in academia, a fungal geneticist was somebody who analyzed genetic networks using fungi as model organisms. As I switched to the industry, my job became more about the functional use of genetics, not just to study and observe and modify to look for some effect. I can now engineer the fungus to delete a gene (if you don’t want the product of that gene), or redirect a pathway, or introduce a gene (if you want the fungus to produce another product). So, I would say that now I am more of a fungal genetic engineer.”

What made you want to join Bolt?

“I’ve heard about Bolt before because of its spider silk, and that it was starting to work on Mylo. I always wanted to see and feel the new Mylo material. When I touched it, it felt so good. The challenge of making something tangible was so appealing to me. Normally companies make a chemical or something that you purify away from the fungus, and at Bolt I got to actually touch and work with the organism. It was also the challenge of working on a fungus versus bacteria or yeast. A fungus is always a challenge - it has a character and it stands up to you.”

To learn more about the team behind Mylo™, stay tuned for our next update with the product development team!

Bolt Welcomes Our First Kickstarter Backer
over 4 years ago – Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 08:32:45 AM

In September, we held our first-ever Kickstarter tour with one of our backers. Eve is a fashion designer from Australia, and has always been interested in using sustainable materials for her designs.

Recently, she came across mycelium and all the potential that fungi hold. In her research, she found the Driver Bag Kickstarter and supported it at the tour level. Thanks, Eve, for your curiosity in wanting to learn about our process! 

Eve came to Bolt on the morning of the tour and met with Dr. Kevin McCluskey, fungal geneticist and lead principal scientist at Bolt. Kevin taught Eve all about the origins of fungi, the difference between mycelium and a fruiting body, and gave her a preview of the Mylo™ production process. 

She also got a surprise gift in the form of her own personalized lab coat. Every employee at Bolt has a lab coat with their name and employee number stamped on the back, and with her newly-acquired knowledge of our process, Eve will fit right in! 

After her intro to Mylo science, it’s off to the labs. Mycologist Andi Bruce led Eve in a hands-on activity, where she made her own slide and explored the features of a mushroom under a microscope. She got to peek the underside of a mushroom cap, learn all about how fungi release and disperse spores, and zoom in on a fruiting body to see the entanglement of hyphae. (If this is getting too nerdy for you, go to our Instagram to learn more about fungi!)

Eve then walked over to the Grow Lab, where, for the first time ever, we lifted up the veil to our process. Andi showed Eve the petri dishes where we culture our mycelium before inoculating it into spawn bags. She then got to observe a Mylo™ harvest as the team harvested mycelium mats and cleaned and measured them for future use. This portion of the tour was top secret! Not even all Bolt employees have set foot in the Grow Lab.

After lunch with our CEO, Dan Widmaier, and VP of Product Development, Jamie Bainbridge, Eve headed to the Studio to meet with Mitch Heinrich, the Sr. Director of Bolt Projects. Bolt Projects is a team of engineers, designers, and product specialists charged with creating products using Bolt materials. They are the team behind the Microsilk™ tie, the Driver Bag, and our collaborations with Best Made Co. Mitch gave Eve a tour of the studio and demonstrated what it’s like to work with and design using Mylo™. He also clued her in on how the Mylo™ material is processed, tanned, dyed, and finished.

 He also showed off some of the past Bolt Projects products and collaborations, including the Microsilk™ tie, the first spider silk product to be commercially available.

As a final treat, we presented Eve with her own Mylo™ key fob. She took a little piece of history home as the first Kickstarter backer to own Mylo™.

We were so happy to host Eve on this day of science, learning, and fungi-themed fun! In Eve’s own words:

“I feel very privileged to have seen the Bolt Threads labs behind the scenes! There was so much information to absorb, and I applaud the Bolt team for doing a marvelous job on making Mylo™. Having seen the process myself, I can absolutely say - It’s worth the wait!”

Mylo™ Driver Bag Receives Honorable Mention in Fast Company's Innovation by Design Awards
over 4 years ago – Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 04:32:01 PM

We are excited to share that the Mylo™ Driver Bag received an Honorable Mention in Fast Company's 2019 Innovation by Design Awards! Out of 4300 entries from the likes of Nike, Microsoft, Mastercard, Gensler, and others, the judges selected the Driver Bag as one of the top innovations in the Fashion + Beauty category.

Fast Company’s Innovation by Design is a competition that honors creative work at the intersection of design, business, and innovation. The awards recognize people, teams, and companies solving problems through design.

This year’s theme dealt with the growing need for conscious consumerism. “For decades, designers have facilitated overconsumption. Now, the most ambitious in the field are addressing the grave problems consumption has wrought,” says Fast Company’s editor-in-chief, Stephanie Mehta.

Bolt Threads is proud to be a part of this change by designing for impact from the start when we bring sustainable material alternatives - like Mylo™ - to the world.

More about Innovation by Design 2019 and meet the rest of the honorees.

Meet the Team - Dr. Kevin McCluskey
over 4 years ago – Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 06:32:59 PM

In the next series of updates, we will be profiling some of the team that’s working on bringing Mylo™ material to life. These are the mycologists, fungal geneticists, process engineers, and designers who are working day in and day out to grow and design the world’s first mycelium-based bag.

Part 2 - Grow: Kevin McCluskey, Ph.D., Fungal Geneticist & Lead Principal Scientist in Fermentation

 Dr. Kevin McCluskey is a fungal geneticist leading the Grow team and guiding the process development for Mylo™ material. As part of his job, Kevin sets direction for the team and makes sure they are in tune with the latest developments across different scientific fields and can translate them to Bolt’s own work.

“You can consider the genome as an instruction set. We are trying to figure out how it’s used to make an organism. And fungi are profoundly diverse. The kingdom of fungi is comparable to plants and animals.”

Before coming to Bolt, Kevin was a curator at the Fungal Genetics Stock Center (FGSC). Established in 1960, the FGSC is the main open repository for genetically characterized fungi. 

“I was the curator of that collection for 23 years. A neat thing about being a curator is that I got to pay attention to scientific progress in many different fields related to fungi, like fungal geneticists working on the Neurospora and studying fungal circadian rhythms, to industrial biotechnology, to plant-microbe interactions, to phylogenetics - understanding how organisms are related, to ecology - understanding where they are in time and space, to mycology - the study of where fungi, what they're called, how they're related to one another, and where they occur.”

Have you seen the field change over the years?

“Yes! Research fields tend to wax and wane, they grow and shrink depending on the available knowledge and the tools that you have access to. Fungi, especially the ones I worked with, were at the cutting edge of all bioresearch in the 1920’s through the 1940’s. Neurospora was foundational to the understanding of how all living organisms work. The research won the Nobel prize in 1958 and is recognized as the central paradigm of molecular genetics upon which we layered more knowledge in the subsequent years. With every new technology that emerged for working with fungi, we saw scientists focus on organisms that could give new information, or that behaved well in the lab. Now, we’re well into the genomics era, which opened the door to working on many different types of fungi. ” 

 What is the most surprising or interesting thing about researching fungi?

“Historically fungi were studied with plants because they also grow in one place, they don't get up and walk around and they look similar to some plants. But actually, fungi are more closely related to animals than they are to plants.

This has an interesting implication when trying to treat fungal infections in humans. A lot of the things that you might want to target for are genes or enzymes that are shared with humans. In order to successfully target a fungus, you must find targets that are different, and there are very few differences. Most antifungal drugs are based on the fact that, unlike humans, fungi don’t use cholesterol in their cell membranes. But most humans are innately resistant to fungi. There’s a suggestion that humans inhale in the order of 1 billion spores per day, but they’re not human pathogens. Most of them can’t grow at body temperature, so there’s only a few that can harm humans.” 

 What drew you to Bolt?

“I grew up in the Bay Area in the 60’s and 70’s and we were all very eco-Granola. The emphasis on sustainability is important to me making a product that doesn't damage the environment. I was also very attracted to the fact that Bolt makes a tangible product, and not just generates IP like many other biotech companies.

One of the most exciting moments working at Bolt was seeing a sheet of finished Mylo™ material for the first time and comparing it to an unfinished sheet of mycelium that we grew. We all looked at each other, like “This is going to change the world!” That was just the most rewarding thing. But, of course, my profession also contains a lot of other rewards, like helping someone learn, or seeing their project come to fruition.”

Are there any good places to forage in the Bay Area?

“That’s an interesting subject. I personally don’t care to eat mushrooms, and I never have. This goes back to when I was a little boy. As much as I like blue cheese, I never liked going out and picking mushrooms and bringing them home. I like to look at them and I leave them for other people to enjoy.”

To learn more about the Grow team stay tuned for our next update!