(Holiday Replay) Leaf It to Science: How Foray Bioscience's Ashley Beckwith is Reforesting the Future
In this special holiday replay episode, we revisit our conversation with Ashley Beckwith, founder of Foray Biosciences, who shares her groundbreaking work in plant cell culture and tissue engineering. Growing up in Colorado, Ashley watched forests disappear to housing development and wildfire—experiences that sparked her lifelong mission to reimagine how we produce plant materials. After training as an engineer and working in medical device development, she pivoted to apply tissue engineering concepts to plants, initially exploring lab-grown wood before discovering a more fundamental problem: the lack of accessible, efficient plant cell culture processes. Today, Foray develops fabricated seeds for forest restoration, creates harvest-free plant products, and builds AI-powered tools to accelerate plant science R&D. Ashley explains why plant cells are the fundamental building blocks for everything from molecules to materials to entire ecosystems, and how her company is working to solve the seed shortage crisis that prevents us from restoring 94% of post wildfire site. She also discusses the potential for de-extinction of recently lost plant species in California and the importance of creating regenerative rather than extractive relationships with plant systems. This conversation explores the intersection of synthetic biology, forestry, and biomanufacturing whilereminding us that we are all, whether we know it or not, plant people.
Chapters:
(00:00:00) - Introduction: Fungi as environmental game-changers
(00:26:18) - Podcast updates and Michael Levin episode highlights
(02:10:35) - Ashley Beckwith and Foray Biosciences: mining fungal biodiversity
(04:57:22) - The untapped power of mycelium in biotechnology
(08:04:15) - Launching the Future is Fungi Award
(08:58:40) - Susanne Gløersen: Why fungi deserve to be core technology
(00:12:09) - Fungi's role in solving climate, pollution, and soil degradation
(00:27:06) - Quickfire questions with Susanne Gløersen
(00:29:14) - Ricky Casini of Michroma: replacing synthetic food dyes with fungi
(00:38:10) - Scaling fermentation capacity in South Korea
(00:38:45) - Pitching fungal colorants to food manufacturers
(00:40:22) - Regulatory wins and transparency in natural colors
(00:41:19) - The future of fungal bio-factories in food production
(00:43:05) - Scaling up production and strategic partnerships
(00:44:09) - Why color matters in consumer packaged goods
(00:45:46) - Winning the Future is Fungi Startup Award
(00:46:59) - Quickfire questions with Ricky Cassini
(00:49:02) - Dr. Britta Winterberg introduces Mycolever's clean beauty mission
(00:50:00) - Fungal bio-compounds replacing petrochemicals in cosmetics
(00:52:10) - Technical challenges and breakthroughs in fungal biotech
(00:59:52) - Quickfire questions with Dr. Britta Winterberg
(01:02:54) - Final reflections on the fungal innovation revolution
