Nonfiction Laboratories is building a technology called “magnetogenetics” that promises to control proteins inside the body — such as antibodies or enzymes — using small magnets. In this episode, co-founder Maria Ingaramo and scientific advisor Andrew York explain how they engineered a protein, MagLOV, that responds strongly to magnetic fields, why most prior attempts have failed to replicate, and how the mechanism of magnetically-controlled proteins actually works. They also get into the “dream” use cases, like cancer drugs that activate only at the tumor, which might have a lower toxicity inside the body.

This podcast is made possible by Astera Institute.

Notes from our discussion: https://nikomc.com/essays/protein-magnets.html

00:00 - Opening

00:54 — Introduction

01:35 — The dream

05:38 — Why magnets vs. light or ultrasound

10:05 — The physics

17:48 — On the name "magnetogenetics"

21:25 — Birds and cryptochromes

27:09 — Why is the field filled with so much junk?

29:51 — Adam Cohen's molecule

33:24 — Markus Meister’s debunking

38:06 — The experiment

46:22 — Finding the LOV domain

54:11 — Singlets, triplets, and cysteine

56:54 — What the magnet is actually doing

1:05:13 — The conformational-change red herring

1:12:46 — The Quantum Biology Institute

1:19:31 — Founding Nonfiction Labs

1:24:38 — How to convince skeptical investors

1:29:39 — What a magnetogenetic medicine might look like

1:38:50 — First clinical indications

1:45:12 — The regulatory path

1:48:01 — What the field needs

1:54:30 — Appendix: Whiteboard lecture

Plasmidsaurus took plasmid sequencing from $600 to $15 and turned a "boring" service company idea into a hugely successful company serving 70,000+ scientists. In this episode, CEO Mark Budde and Niko McCarty get into the bigger question: what does it take for companies to automate and scale wet-lab biology methods in the same way that Plasmidsaurus did for sequencing? They cover the early Oxford Nanopore bet, the obsession with speed, and why Mark won’t sell customer data to AI labs.

This podcast is made possible by Astera Institute.