Utilium: A Nature-Based Biofilm Buster ft. Dr. David Stapleton | E20

David is a researcher-turned-innovator with three decades in biomedical science, a PhD-era discovery that reshaped our understanding of energy metabolism, and a new company, Utilium, born from a hospital bed and a handful of rocks from Bunnings.

In this episode, we sit down with one of CoLabs' Impact Members to explore his bio-inspired approach to biofilms: the invisible microbial communities that cost global industry $2–3 trillion a year, fuel antibiotic resistance, and lurk in the rubber seal of your washing machine.

David shares how crustaceans (who somehow keep their shells immaculate in an ocean seemingly devoted to the degradation of most things) became the blueprint for a technology that could transform healthcare, marine infrastructure, food production, and more.

In this conversation, we explore how daydreaming is a useful method for ideation, the freedom that comes with constraint, trusting your instincts, and why the gold is always hiding in the detail.

What we cover

• How David isolated AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase) – a breakthrough enzyme central to energy metabolism – using a Velcro analogy and an analog lab setup, pre-internet
• The brutal economics of academic research: falling grant success rates, frozen samples, and an unceremonious exit
• A winding path through cannabis terpenes, horse probiotics, and ship biofouling that eventually pointed to biofilms
• What biofilms actually are – and why treating them as a bacterial problem misses the point entirely
• The first experiment: two rocks, some oregano oil, and 93 days in Port Phillip Bay
• How working with almost no equipment led David to discover something he would have missed in a fully-equipped lab
• The role of AI (including a helpfully sarcastic session with Gemini) in checking assumptions and staying honest
• Biofilm's reach: washing machines, chronic wounds, hospital sinks, dairy farms, pipes, marine hulls... a near-infinite problem space!
• Why antibiotic resistance is the wrong frame, and what crustacean shell chemistry suggests as an alternative
• Where Utilium is headed, and which applications David is backing first

Keen to learn more about Utilium? 

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Transcript

Welcome And Mission

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello and welcome to The Strange Attractor, an experimental podcast from CoLabs, a transdisciplinary innovation hub and biotechnology co-working lab based in Melbourne, Australia. I'm your co-host of Sam Wine, and alongside my co-founder Andrew Gray, we'll delve deep into the intersection of biology, technology, and society through the lens of complexity and systems thinking. Join us on a journey of discovery as we explore how transdisciplinary innovation informed by life's regenerative patterns and processes could help us catalyze a transition towards a thriving future for people and the planet. Welcome. This time round on The Stranger Tractor, we sat down with David from Utilium. So David is one of our impact members here at Colabs, and he's been working on a bio-based and bio-inspired technology that is aiming to replicate the way in which crustaceans and shellfish manage to maintain an immaculate outer casing, and they don't get gunked up like we do with our boats and other man-made things like pipes and all this other sort of stuff, where you get a buildup of biofilms. So the technology is a biofilm buster and it has applications across industry, um, in healthcare, uh, like honestly, anything where you have the potential for a biofilm buildup, uh, this has potential applications. So it's for us, we saw it as a really exciting and outsized potential for positive impact, hence why we provided the free space for David to be able to validate and prototype the technology further whilst he tries to raise some funding to be able to bring it to life. Uh, we hope you enjoy this conversation. Um yeah, David's a really wonderful thinker and a fascinating human and a delightful member of the Colabs family. So please enjoy this conversation. Uh, David, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for um coming on the podcast. I know it's been a while. You've been very intentional with us about you'll let me know when the right time is, you'll let me know when the right time is. Um, what do you think made now feel like the right time for you?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Project-wise, I understand what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, and I know I've discovered something extraordinary. So therefore, that gives me a lot of confidence that I'm not just smoking around in the lab. I'm deliberately doing something that's going to be very effective. And I need that, I'm a confidence person, so I need that confidence. Whereas if I talked earlier, I would have gone, oh well, I'm trying this and trying that. But because I know I have something and I'm on the way to identifying it a lot more, I have a lot of purpose. I need that purpose before I talk.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

That makes sense. Yeah, I guess you uh the way that I interpret you is you're you are a very intentional person. Um, you know, whether that's intentionally using daydreaming to try and think about your project or even perhaps unintentionally, but there does feel like there is a lot of intention through who you are and what you do. And um, I'm wondering whether or not that's had like a I guess a lot of an impact on your your career that you've spent, you know, because before you were in the startup land, um was it two, three decades in sort of bio, biomed, biotech? What would you how would you define like just medical research?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Cool. And I'm curious, like, so you you're not everyone has made as interesting a discovery as you have, right? Um, did you want to talk us through some of your research, maybe your PhD?

The PhD Breakthrough And Intuition

SPEAKER_00 3:59

So I um um I was in research. I worked as a research assistant for quite a number of years when I finished my undergraduate. And eventually the guy I was working with said, you should do a PhD. I said, Oh, what projects you got? So I got one on AIDS, because AIDS was just starting at that time, trying to work out the virus and everything. And another one, uh I've got this enzyme that controls energy metabolism. Others have been working on it around the world for 10 years, but I think you'd be quite good at it. So I chose that one. That was more interesting than the viral side of things. And um, it was in those days there was no internet, you had to wait for papers to come out. Go to the library and try to copy them and read them and um AI. Everything was very old fashioned and um compared to now. Had to do other apertoires and things you're probably not allowed to do now. And after a year or so I was I was following all their protocols and wasn't able to get anywhere. Um and then one day I was gardening, I remember turner really, uh, and I had this idea on a weekend. Bring the mic a little bit closer. Oh, you're perfect. To um use uh like a velcro, create a velcro, work out how this activity stuck to a surface it liked. We had some data on that. Called my boss, he uh uh supervisor, he said, that's good, let's get the team together. We did, we organized a strategy, and a month later uh we'd isolated this enzyme called AMP activated protein kinase. And what that means is uh a kinase is an enzyme that transfers a phosphate from ATP onto a other protein, it changes its what it does, and the AMP is a nucleotide. And the publications all thought it was uh one protein enzyme, but we actually found it was made of three proteins, basically what I did. And because we were first, we had the patent rights in those days. You could patent genes and um publication rights, and that really blasted my career big time because it was huge. I won awards after that, I won opportunity to travel to Toronto for two years. Um that was really that was really exciting times, and I realized then that not too bad at these idea things.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

Yeah, so can you talk me through the process? So, because it sounds like you know, they had a bit of an idea of what they thought or where it was meant to be, but instead of that, you've kind of it sounds like you kind of were like, you know what, I think it might be different to that. I've got a hunch or an intuition, and I'm gonna work with that and then come back to it and looking at through new eyes. And I feel like most innovation and most good science actually is that, right? It's people who don't get stuck in the, I guess you could almost say like the tram track of what's been going on, because there's there's obviously diminishing returns as long if you keep going a certain path in science, you know, you're you're reducing your surface area to the unknown if you're constantly going the same way. And sometimes you need to look to the left or to the right, or potentially backtrack a bit and try a different path, which then opens up an entirely new frontier. Um, so I'd be curious to know like what was your what was your process with trying to figure this out? Because it would have been, as you said, it was analog, right? Like for people like myself, you know, the first thing I'll do is go and look online or check out GPT. Like we have like the Library of Alexandria at our fingertips. Um, it's a very different way of cognitively processing information. You're much more of like a synthesizer of information that you probably don't know deeply. So, yeah, I'm curious to know how how different that was for you back then when you're trying to figure this out. Like, what was your process?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Uh process follow what's known first, get an understanding of the situation, and then um just allow my mind to go free and start thinking up ideas. And that's when I first realized that I had a mind where ideas just went flying through all the time. I didn't realise till later it was my daydreaming method. But I have ideas flying through the back of my mind all the time. And ones that I liked, I stopped thinking and pulled it in. So I was very very creative, it was different way of thinking. And um got the approval of, as I said, of the powers to be to do this. So I was halfway through my PhD at this stage and I hadn't really got any results, so I was under a bit of pressure to do that or change projects. That was also in front of me. But I believed in what I could do, I knew I had an idea. Um and so we essentially made three Velcro materials and um Yeah, I sort of put what we had through the put the pig stuff, pig liver stuff through it. And um watched what happened, and one of them stuck like glue, and was when we took time to got it off, it was in its perfect state. So it's really just allowing my mind to go free and be creative and trust myself, trust my ability, trust my instincts. And that was really the basis of my science career from then on and still to here as well.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

Yeah, okay. So, and just so that I understand, um so when you say like a velcro-like, is that you you you gave that a certain certain charge or you had certain molecules or things attached to it, and then you run um like a fluid through it, and then it's picking things up. Is it kind of like that?

SPEAKER_00 10:06

It's like that. We knew that um so the way the way this enzyme worked is it it it liked having um peptides. The way we measured it was we had a peptide that was um something it really liked, and um it transferred and we had mixed it with radioactive ATP in those days. And in those days, you could eat in the lab. And about 10, 5 meters away was a radioactive laboratory. Yeah, yeah. It's experimental space with only a perspective screen to protect you. Yeah. Meanwhile, you're eating anyway. At different times, right? Different times. So there was a the way it worked was that you uh incubated your extracts and some radioactive ATP and this peptide, and uh then you collected it on some special paper that bound it. Yeah. And you just look for the measure the radioactivity of what's been happening. Does has that can explain it very well. Um the enzyme puts takes a phosphate off ATP, cuts it, transfers it to the protein or peptide of interest onto a amino acid called serine or threenine. And then you could measure that. And that's how it was measured, and that's what was published, how it was measured. Uh the lab I happened to work in uh at St. Vincent's Institute of Medic Research, um they made lots of peptides for all different series. They had like a library of over a thousand of these peptides. So we looked at similar ones to it, and we screened a whole lot where it had uh similar activity. Uh and then we um attached them to uh what's called chromatography column solid support, uh tiny little things, and then lined them all up against each other and just poured put different different versions of that um extract through it. Washed it all, looked what came through, what didn't come through, and one of them it didn't come through. It was stuck on it, and it needed a very harsh treatment. Um high salt, high, high, high to get it off because it was bound so tightly. And uh in those days you'd run things on a gel and you'd stain it, and you'd design it, and eventually you see what was their protein was, and there was three proteins all in equamolar relationship, which suggests that you had a uh a trimer of of proteins, which was not hurt at all.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Interesting. So not only did you discover ATB kinase, which is like a big deal, like there's a conference on it every two years. Yeah. I mean, I learnt about this at uni. You know, not once do you learn who who found the thing, which is so fascinating when you're learning science.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Um and in those days there was no mass spectrometry spectrometry. Sounds like you did a lot of it more analog. The um the database only had yeast proteins in it. It was very young, it was just before PCR, real early days, and the only thing we had was an amino acid analyzer, and it took one hour per amino acid to come off our sequences. So we would sit all night and tender, and then put that in the database. What can is anything? No, not yet, keep going. And finally we found it related to a yeast protein, thank heavens. Uh huh. Quickly got the story together, quickly published it, got accepted overnight, quick as I've ever had something accepted, and um won the race.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

That's so fascinating hearing that story. And I imagine now as well, like for you to still be in the game and still doing what you're doing, you would have had to have adapted and evolved your um systems or processes for how you do science. I'd be so fascinated to know what has shifted and and maybe for the worse and for the better with doing science now versus when you first started.

How Science Culture Shifted

SPEAKER_00 14:04

The biggest thing that's shifted is um just the admin, the paperwork, the uh risk assessments, the lack of create creativity's gone out the window, I think. Yeah, with the be free. Think what you want to do, um, even with animal models.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

It is interesting as well, like how much now with things like what cortical labs are doing, we actually might have the capacity to remove the need for animal models for like some sort of um like drug analysis and stuff like that. So it is interesting that we're progressing to a point where we don't have to use them. Um, but to your point, yeah, it does feel like there is a big um admin burden that a lot of scientists are having to deal with. Like when you look at papers now, like back in the day, I don't know how many authors you had or co-authors you had, but you know, maybe two, three. Whereas now you look at a paper, there's like 20, 30, you know, and the discoveries don't feel as as big or as amazing as what they were back in the day. It's really interesting just noticing little shifts like that. Um, but then I guess, you know, you that I assume that's maybe what pulled you out of academia as well. Is did were you aware that there was like the startup realm whilst you were studying? So this was never never heard of it.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Never heard of it, never mentioned. It was really dazed. And I I I left science because I had to, my research funding ran out. The success rate, uh, I could get grants when it was 15 to 20 percent success rate, which is pretty low, but I had a pretty good track record. When it got below that, I couldn't all the big boys got um grants was jobs, jobs for the boys. And yeah, I've heard it's kind of like that. I had to go to my minus 80 degrees freezer and then put my arm and pull it across and put everything in the bin, which is devastating, all these samples you'd done over the last eight, ten years. And they hand you pass, there's no farewell, and off you go, you're you're out.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Yeah, it's so it's fascinating how competitive and cutthroat it seems to be. Like I've never worked there, so I really can't have an opinion on it, but it does seem to sound like um almost like bringing the worst out in people, and it's not because anyone wants that, it's just the way that the system is designed, and it seems like there are maybe perverse incentives that make it end up like that. But um, yeah, so I'm assuming that pulled you out, but it wasn't utility and wasn't the first place you started. You you you had a couple of other little side projects.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

And before that, a really good bit of advice I got as an exit interview. Yeah. The director was your PhD will carry you a long way. And in my mind, I thought, whatever. But they were right, because the public really looks up to anyone with education, particularly a PhD, they don't care what it's in. I don't could be money. I realize that and I started to use that a lot. And I I still use it today. It's very, I'm very comfortable in it.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Literally, the only reason why I would do a PhD is so that you have the the weight of the title at the end of your name. Um very useful for credibility, especially if you're trying to be the CSO or something like that for a company. I imagine it was quite useful for you with the the B12 patches and the is it B12 magnesium?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Was that before the the hemp gin?

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Or yeah. So I left uh just before I left, um, I'd been at a conference overseas somewhere in America, I think. And I saw a little shop selling uh supplements on a patch. I thought, oh, that'd be interesting. So because I get I had really um I get a lot of brain fog. It's really hard to get rid of it. And um I tried to buy them B12 patch, bought some, and I my my fog went gone completely. I thought, oh my god, that's a game changer for me. Wish I had this earlier.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

Yeah, I had the same thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

And I I thought we should have these in Australia. So when I left, I just started learning about setting up a business, an ABN, learning about e-commerce websites, and sort of taught myself how to use Shopify and got on there and started selling these Shopify.

SPEAKER_02 18:19

So it must have been relatively recent, like the last five, ten years. Okay, cool.

From Academia To Startup Learning

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Yeah. About ten years ago, nine, ten years ago started it. Just started selling a couple of vitamins, uh then started looking around, getting confident with Alibaba and negotiating with Chinese and getting stuff sent through without getting picked up in in ways that they perhaps should have been. Yeah. Um anyway, so that was my introduction to it. And that's been pretty handy. That's kept me going. No matter what else I've done, I've always had that because it's always paid my rent at least. A little bit of supplementary income sort of thing. It is. It is. And uh one one of my things about me is I'm really passionate about making a difference in health. That was my actually that was my uh that was my uh goal when I started science. And now I'm in startup mode, I've extended that to the planet. Make a difference to health and the planet. That works out. So shift shifted everything across now, but it's always been my mission to do that. So patched up, it's called patched up is not about making money, it's about making a difference in people's health. Someone messaged me and says, David, I love your B12 patches, but I need to use them every day and I can't afford it because I'm on a pension. I go, no problem. And I just make a really hardly make any money for myself, make sure they have what they need. That that's who I am as a which anyway. Um so patchup was first. And then at the time, was this when uh hemp cannabis was starting to come on people's radar and hemp cedar oil was just about to be approved as a food. Uh 2017 or 18. I think. And there was a whole lot of meetup groups about it. I started going to them and I met a guy who had uh saved the domain name the cannabis company. And um tick-chatted and he said, How about I give you a few shares and uh you be my head of innovation. I thought, sure. I knew nothing about it, no AI to help me, but yeah. Got the PhD, so and didn't sell cannabis, I was building a brand towards when it was uh allowed. But in the meantime, hemp seed oil was there, and um I found out it was pretty good at innovating then because I made uh started selling hemp seed oil for pets. That was the biggest seller by Country Mile. Reducing inflammation, helping everyone love that, and we'd soon got a marketing going as well, and it really just started going really well. And then uh there was discussion amongst the three of us about making a gin, maybe a hemp, just with hemp gin. And at that time I just came across these things called terpenes, which are essential oils are consisted of one major terpene and a whole stack of about 20 or 30.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

And every plant has terpenes, right? Like it's the volatile organic compounds that they might release um to communicate or protect themselves or heal themselves.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Cool. Yeah. Yeah. And so for people, for us people that we I always say they have a smell, a taste, and they do something. And so, you know, there's there's eucalyptus and there's um I I'm big on my essential oils.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Like that was what I always thought I would be would be like a little alchemist making sort of medicines and extracting oils and stuff. So that was kind of one of my draws to science to begin with. Um, you've quickly learned that it's very different in Did you have a favorite one? Um, lemon-sented eucalyptus is probably my favorite um smell, but that's I don't know about the functionality of that per se. Um, if I'm thinking functional, I would usually use um like a lavender or something for me. For for me, that's such a calming thing. Like, you might often see me with lavender in my ear as well. That's just something that I find incredibly relaxing. And then rosemary sprigs as well for just like alertness or working. So I I would use those. Um, and then essential oils-wise, I just knew the importance of um when you walk in a forest, so breathing in all the terpenes. So I actually um in in my office, I actually have like uh a little um nebulizer that has like cedar wood, sandalwood, um uh fur, like fir or pine. Um, and then I'll, you know, throw in a couple of different flowers here, there and everywhere based off sort of like that principle of like when you're in a forest, your body relaxes, you actually um can think more clearly, and it is beneficial to your immune system when you're breathing all this in. So I guess, yeah, trying my hardest to emulate that in an office environment. And I find it always feel a lot better.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

In Japan, Japan, you know, they use as a country treat. They put people put people through them and it's better, they're so much better. And that's why it feels good walking in the bush because the eucalyptus trees are limited to that beautiful elliptical and actually feel fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

All the indigenous um folks always speak to that. They're like eucalyptus is sacred, it's medicine, you know, it it heals you. That's why we use it for every time there's a um fire ceremony and they'll a smoking ceremony, they um it's usually eucalyptus and it's a very simple thing.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

I learned about terpenes when I was at the cannabis company and I thought started researching how they're anti-inflammatory. But how come I haven't heard about this as a biochemist? And I started looking at the literature and it up to 1985, and then it stopped. It stopped, and I wondered if Nixon's pharmaceuticals came in and said this is threatening our livelihood. We're making the anti-inflammatories, not the plants. And that's when I came into science just after that. So I I haven't got any proof to say that, but I suspect that's played a role in it.

SPEAKER_02 24:22

It's definitely the case. And I think what's also really interesting about um cannabis is the fact that we have our own internal endocannabinoid system, which I feel like is more known now than before. But it's quite fascinating to think that we actually actively release that in our body um as a communication mechanism already. And so it it's these things are binding to receptors that we already have in us, which is just a fascinating quirk of biology, how you know things are things are reused in a different living system, you know, even if it's millions of years later, and it's just so fascinating that they can still interrelate.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

I've got another theory about that too. Because cannabis was dropped, made illegal for a long time. A lot, a lot of diseases popped up in that space at that time. And I'm wondering if it's because the their receptors weren't being utilized by their common ligand that was meant to bind them. Even hemp seed oil was out, hemp oil was out.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

So it's a it was a staple food, and we used it for receptors. We made sales out of it. Like uh, we made so much of our clothes were made out of that. There was a thriving hemp industry all throughout Europe. It's only, yeah, as you as you said, I think it was, and you see this happen quite a lot with commercial interests. Like you can't patent a plant, so there's no research on rosemary or all of these other herbal things that have been used for thousands of years. But if you can extract it and you can refine it, refine it, refine it, and then you've got something like is it is it you or one of those trees that you can make an antibiotic or something out of, but you need to you know refine, refine, refine, and then you can patent that. So it's interesting how all of these things that you can't patent that have a known effect don't get any funding or any research, or are actively shut down by folks making money out of uh a synthetic analog or a small molecule drug that does something that is probably not as good as a natural one, but it's a it's an interesting quirk of the system.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

There are three different ways that cannabis could bind or molecules, and they were all vacant most of the time because we weren't allowed to have the material, have the ligands that come in. And I always wonder when did what diseases came along because we had those systems were blocked. I think it's that's another boy.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

It is fascinating. It it it also reminds me of like um if you don't expose kids to nuts, they get allergies to nuts. And I'm wondering if there's some level of exposure to a wide range of terpenes, which actually creates a healthy functioning human and immune system. Um and that in this world where we get most of our food from let's say four to ten crops, um, how much that probably impacts just everything?

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Um bit of a bit of a yeah, so when when the cannabis side quest started to explode again, terpenes became alive again. And terpenes everywhere. So there's one called Mersine, which is in cannabis, but it's also in mangoes and a whole lot of other types of fruit as well. Um but because they're in cannabis, they became alive and a big business. People selling terpenes for all sorts of things all around the world, not just for uh cannabis-related stuff, but all health people realized and started innovating different ways of using it. Like us, we decided to add one to a gin. And we went up to this um distillery in Heelsville called Alchemy. Just across the road from Four Pillars, and um they do some make some gins for you on the side, and uh we told them what we wanted, and they said, I said, I want to put in this turkey. No, it's too oily, it's not gonna work. I said, Yeah, just give it a shot. Um so he gave it a shot, and we went up for some tastings about a month later or two months later, and he met us at the door. He says, I was wrong, this is one of the best gins I've ever made in my life. This is gonna win awards, and uh, which it did at the San Francisco Spirit Awards. Um that was our launch into another product. Um here I'd gone from a meek and mold scientist to making cannabis gins.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

I saw the articles, man. It was so funny reading through some of those, just like the startup daily one or like the good food. Um, it was really interesting hearing hearing how they'd like framed it all. And it was all, you know, well, because we've got this scientist involved, it's very very legitimate, which was a really interesting. Yeah, the PhD coming again. Yeah, yeah, seriously, but fascinating. Um, okay, so that kind of that's where you got your taste for innovation, right? Because, you know, it's one thing, like, don't get me wrong, like you've published like, let's say a hundred papers, right? So very proficient in academia. But it is a very different mindset when you're innovating in a commercial context or in a context where you're not, you don't have to just like you know, do a triplicate set and then retest and retest and retest and ensure that you know there is a 99% chance that it falls within a 10% deviation of the, you know, that's quite kind of all out the window when you're working in a commercial context. So did you find that it was easy for you to make that switch? Like what did you have to unlearn from academia?

Terpenes Hemp Gin And Innovation

SPEAKER_00 29:52

I love that switch because I was that person in science. Interesting. And I was controlled by the rules, particularly the more I went on. In the early days, when you can eat in the lab, you could do all sorts of things. But once that changed and got more controlled, then uh I got controlled. And I I was really starting to get more and more limited and more and more frustrated. So I wasn't as disappointed in, I suppose, in hindsight that I lost my funding and I had to go and leave my passion. I I'm a free thinker, I need to have the room to do the ideas, to think about it. I need to be trusted with my who I am as Dr. David. That that's when I started using the PhD a lot. And that exit interview proved 100% correct. So I I'm I'm a natural innovator. I realised that in my PhD at the postdoc Disney Toronto, I was also stuck. I realize I'm much more really good at ideas, I'm really good at creativity, I'm really good at adapting to things I know nothing about and learning about it real quick and then seeing the applications to it. And being in the cannabis company, that really helped me um realize that in a big way. I'm actually really good at this. And the things I'm making are really successful as well. Like the second gin we made. Uh it had top beta carryophane in it, which is from Pepper. Has a lovely smell. Um, anti-inflammatories as well. And at that time, the Australian for Natural Review came and did an interview with us just before we launched that. Um and apparently, and then we had a little tasting place too in the warehouse are at all these old ladies started appearing, old men, and apparently they've all gone to their rheumatologist who's read the article and said, I found a solution for your anti-inflammatory, it's this gin. Go and buy some. So we had a whole hundreds of elderly people come in desperate. Desperate for a GNT. They bought heaps of gin from us because they were we said it was anti-inflammatory. The anti the Australian Financial Review convinced the GPs that's speculative. That's so fascinating. And um, yeah, anyway.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

But it's true, like so a lot of tinctures back in the day, we would use uh brandy or something like an alcohol to um suspend the terpenes, which we didn't have the name for it back in the day. But that's exactly what we did. So, you know, even though my head's going, oh, but it's an alcohol, it's like, yeah, but that's a really efficient delivery mechanism. Um, so that's uh that's maybe that's why they came, they they had that growing up as a kid. Um fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

So okay, and then and also the terpenes were important because they are where I am now. They are in my mind for the first time, and I started learning about them, particularly what they did on the bottom of boats. And that was an idea that stood stuck with me through other things I did at that time. Terpenes are related to the bottom of the boats. Yeah, they stop, they're antibacterial as well. And I also learned from um a friend of mine who cleaned the bottom of ships as a business, um, traveled the world, took them out of dry dock, uh, cleaned them all. He told me about how a layer of bacteria land on the bottom of boats first, and then they form this slimy thing around them, and then once they do that, they're like velcro and attract everything that comes to them. But it's the bacteria first, and while he was talking, I thought, I know some terpenes that might fix that up. Um, so I kept that to myself for the next five years before I actually acted on it. Percolating in the background there. Yeah, just leaving it there, watching the literature to see what was coming.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

So tell me a little bit more about the idea that you had with the um the bottom of the ships. So you've been mulling over it for five years. Um, when did you have that sort of moment of insight of like, okay, I think I have a solution?

SPEAKER_00 33:59

It was more than do I have a solution? Was it the right time for me to do it? Was I motivated enough to start something new? So I had another business in between cannabis company and this one plant science. And I still had it in my head all the way through that space. Um plant sciences with a farmer, another academic, and myself. And this showed you how good at innovation I am. I know nothing about horses. We made I made a probiotic for horses to stop them, particularly X-race horses who are stressed, to be calm in one week. And I know nothing about horses, I know nothing about hemp fibre, but a bit of reset takes me five minutes to understand what it can do. And I'd made this great product which is still for sale for now from plant science. There you go. But I had the idea all the way through that, and I um it wasn't till I had a scare with health and I was in hospital for a couple of months with an undiagnosed pneumonia that as I was recovering in there, I thought I've got to get out and do this turban experiment. As soon as I get out, and I'd only recently moved from the hills of Alpham, Borondite, to Bayside Kilda, and I thought, close to the beach, now's my time. I'm just gonna give it a shot. And I decided to do that. And when I came out of hospital, I'm still pretty sick and I not diagnosed proper yet. But I staggered through all the pain and um bought some rocks from Bunnings and epoxy resin hardener from a marine shop in Elizabeth Street. And I bought some essential oils on Amazon because I couldn't buy the terpenes because I needed to have a chemical license and be part of somewhere like here. So I picked the one with the most likely chance, and that was oregano oil. Makes sense to me. It was very strong.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

So I um I used to use that as a herbal medicine treatment for throat um infections. So it was really good for you don't want too much of it though.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

You'd have to you had to dilute it like one to a like you'd put like one drop in 250 mil or something like that, mix it around. Um, and but it was, yeah, it's so potent and it actually burns. Like if you get a drop of origama oil on your skin, it's insane the amount of like I don't know what is in what is in that, but um it's called carvacroll.

The DIY Oregano Sea Trial

SPEAKER_00 36:50

And I've got some in the lab you want to come and smell it. Yeah, yeah. It's so strong, it's it's 90% of the acetyl oil. It's carver crawl, and I've been had my iron carver crawl for a long time, been published in biophaling journals, um, but never really been used properly. Thought I'll just give it a shot. So I got these rocks, they were that weren't that big, you know, and painted them in the backyard of where I was at. And in one of them I put I had a guess percentage, um, three percent essential oil in it. And the other one with nothing in it naively went to along along St. Kilda Beach, off Middle Park, is a thing called a groin. It's it's looks like a pier, but it's concrete and it's actually to help. It's got storm water coming out, it's just protecting it. And on one side of it, it had a whole bed of um mussels and stuff. I put my two rocks, tiny rocks, on this bed of mussels, unaware of tides and things. Just think it'll be safe. For 93 days it was safe. And I put it in uh winter time or just because winter's coming again. I had no idea about I thought in hindsight, I thought winter was a windy time. But it's it's really still and it's in the bay. Unfortunately. So every time I come back and check my two rocks, they were still there. Amazingly, tides kept coming going. And I I started watching, I learned about biofilms by then, so which are communities of bacteria covered in the slime. And I noticed the slime come along after about 20 days, or maybe less than that, maybe two weeks. I thought, oh, that's what they're talking about. And then I started noticing brown spots, and then I started noticing green spots, and then I put it in the water, took it to put in the water, and uh up grew this three-dimensional firefouling on this rock. So I learned about firefouling hands-on watching it grow. And then one day I came back at spring, spring tides had come in, it'd gone. Summer in the ocean. Still doing well, I bet. And the control, and that was just with uh uh the oregano oil in it, it had nothing, absolutely nothing. 93 days, I thought, imagine if I had the pure stuff. So that really got me into biofilms and understanding how it did. And um I thought, I need to start a business in this. So I was meeting with my uh stepsister, and our parents were elderly, and we need to get them into an age home. So we're chatting about that, and then she said, So what do you do? I said, I I'm out out of out of work, but I've got this grade. I'm really good at ideas. For example, and I talked about this example, she goes, Oh, you should meet my friend Rob Jell, who, for those that don't know, was a legend in the 90s when he did the weather. Um, he was he um was one of the hottest celebrities in Victoria at that time. And people would even use his name as a verb when someone says it's gonna rain tomorrow, and the other person says, Who are you, Rob Jell? Yeah. And and he he's now the president of the Royal Society of Victoria, Water Australia. Um he he we had a chat and he says, I'd love to start a business with you. Let's come up with a name. So sort of casually how it started, Utilium started. And Utilium, he it's a bit of a mistake. He meant meant to find a Latin or Greek name that meant codings. And he chose utilum, he thought that was it, but uh it actually is better because it stands for utility, it does everything. And the way it's worked out, it's actually a better name than a coding only. So anyway, that's how uh utilum started, and I potted around and I got a bit more confident, and I did started painting concrete and other things and really learning about biofilms and and biofouling, buying lots of hands-on uh learning.

SPEAKER_02 41:08

So, for those that aren't super aware, could you kind of go into a little bit behind biofilms, biofouling, what that is, because I think people might be like, I have no idea, but then everyone will probably know. So, have you got any like pretty concrete examples of where you might see that day to day?

Biofilms In Homes Hospitals Industry

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Firstly, it's a bacteria love sticking together in water or on water, so under the water or on a wet surface. You might have a wet surface around your house. Why is that? Um that's a good question. Um is it the movement and access to No, I think it's the way they what they do once they're together is they send some signals out we're big enough and they wrap this slimy cover all around them. And I think it needs the water for that to be and once they've got that around them, they are indestructible around the world and cost the world two to three trillion dollars a year in damages. With a T industry. Trillion. Wow. Trillion. It's a really huge issue. And you may see it um in your washing machine, in that little rubber thing when you be when you open the door. If it's anything black in there, that's a biofilm. Need to get rid of that because it all goes through all your clothes. Um might be funny stains on the bottom of your shower or your pink you can't get rid of. The pink, yeah, yeah. Pink or orange. Yeah. I've got an orange one in mine. And um, that's from the soil, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 42:39

It's a it's a soil bacteria that, to your point, once it's established, good luck.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

And it's living in the drain. Um they're biofilms. Um they're on chronic wounds. You might know someone who's got a chronic wound that can't be healed. Um it increases antibiotic resistance by a thousandfold once that's on someone's skin. It's a really huge problem. Clog pipes, bottom of boats, water purification, food industry, agriculture, hospitals, hospitals everywhere. Um, hospital sinks is a disaster. The any anywhere in the hospital is it couldn't be a hot zone.

SPEAKER_02 43:21

Yeah, no, it sounds like I know that they're they're everywhere, right? It's so fascinating. So if we're gonna think about it like a biofilm is more like an infrastructure or an organelle ecosystem.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

I treat it like a mitochondria or something like that, because it's um it's surrounded by like a membrane. There's a lot of signaling with stuff going backwards and forwards, and inside it's an active unit. And this would be hype um heretical to microbiology, but the bacteria are irrelevant once they're in that side. I liken it to glycogen, the molecule glycogen. I used to work on glycogen, next size research, and it's got 50. Thousand glucose units and a few proteins. So we never once talked about the glucose when it got reduced with certain exercise or disease or changed all about the proteins. It was all about just the glycogen. For me, the biofilm is an active unit, and every everyone makes does their part, but it's not about one part like the bacteria. And I think that's one of the issues with the research currently, why nothing happens is it's treated like the bacteria are the most important.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Rather than yeah, so this is a really fascinating point around like reductionist materialistic approaches to science of can be limited in the way in which they perceive reality. So rather than seeing which is interesting as well, because you'd think that we're so used to in science seeing that it's a part of a system, like we call it the endocrine system, or this system. But it is funny that we still sometimes fail to see how things can come together and there is an emergent phenomenon where the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts. And specifically in the biofilm space, it sounds like that's a real thing that you have to kind of comprehend and almost see it as is it something that is it is uh beyond and above? And from what I can tell as well, they almost communicate like almost like it's a brain, a hive mind, right? Like they can send signals where something will fire off here and the entire, I guess, colony or collection, the swarm.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Yeah, they have a thing called dispersion. So their life cycle is find a surface, accumulate everyone together, and fungi in it too, sometimes, and put the slime around them. And then if they sense a surface nearby.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

So a scoby is kind of like a biofilm as well.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

Yeah. They can they sense a surface they want to colonize, or if they're too big for the not enough food for everyone there, or something like that, they will send a signal to the slime and it'll open up a door, and a cohort will go out, bacteria will go out and do whatever they need to do, to find somewhere else or colonize another space. It might be a boat nearby or a rope or something they've seen that they want to get onto.

SPEAKER_02 46:07

So it is like a very much a collective intelligence.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

Yes, correct. And um, and then it it's closes up. The thing about the dispersion is they're vulnerable for two to four hours because they're open this time. No scientists know how to open it up.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

Well, not many way, but so now that is interesting because like from this is where you've tried to look at it differently, right? So instead of targeting the bacteria, you're going, well, what happens if we can nudge it rather than kill it? So this this nudging concept um is something that I'm really curious about if you want to speak more to that.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

We're looking at behavioral change of the biofilm, which is completely new. I just went to a biofilm conference three weeks ago and no one mentioned that at all. And being a biochemist, so biochemists we look at proteins and enzymes and systems and organelles and stuff. I'm coming into this space, I should say, with no microbiology training at all. Um, I've never published a book microbiology or bacteria. I hardly ever used it in my career. So something's very beginner's mind though. I'm looking at this as an organelle. I'm looking at this as a whole complex. I'm looking at it differently to other people, microbiologists who grew up in that space and and how they work. They see it as bacteria only, not seeing the whole thing as a complex. And I'm I like seeing things as a whole complex, how a cell works, how mitochondria works, how the nucleus works.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

That holistic approach, I think, allows you to gain insights, which can seem almost magical to others who might be stuck in a bit more of a reductionist approach, but to me, it makes sense. That's just the way that I try to look at the world is through like that systems lens and acknowledging the interconnectedness of everything, from like, you know, right from the smallest living um unit of the cell all the way up. And then you can even say that even smaller than the cell, it's there's still um entanglement and things like that going on at a subatomic level. So it's all interconnected and interrelated, and seeing them as separate or only focusing on parts without it being attuned to the whole seems like most of the best science is going to come from actually trying to put these things back together and look at them as you're saying, as a complex or as a whole. Um which I think is yeah, super cool. So, okay, great. So you you're you're looking at nudging their behavior, you're looking at shifting them so that they're looking for weaknesses in them that are not known scientifically.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

So although there's probably a hundred thousand scientists working on this, for me, they're they're relevant to me. Because what I'm doing is different, I know what's doing different to them. So I I don't feel under any, it's no pressure to publish or find stuff. But I'm looking at looking at ways to nudge them. Do they move? Is it a way they open up? Is can I activate, stimulate that dispersion? Can I tempt them out of their their fortress because I've knocked on the door the right way and I've got the key to open their outside?

SPEAKER_02 49:18

Semiotics, like you're looking at communication, like can you communicate with this unit and convince it to behave in a way that's just trust that what I'm doing is safe.

SPEAKER_00 49:29

And we've found a way to do that, I think. Nice.

SPEAKER_02 49:34

Using you want to Yeah, yeah, I'd love to go there. So um I think that's a perfect segue. So you you mentioned before that you put these rocks on a bed of mussels. Um, and I know that the story goes that after you'd been experimenting with the origami, you had a bit of an insight or a realization about um uh let's just say like a lot of marine animals that you will see, um, even when they wash up on the shore, they're like pristine, like the shells, the shells, um, not all shells, some shells, which you know they literally are designed to attach to everything. That's a different story. We're not talking about them, we're thinking more like crabs and crustaceans, and they always look immaculate, even if you pulled them out of the bottom of the ocean, which is fascinating because they're filter feeders, so they're getting exposed to all manner of gunk, but they always look perfect. So that was kind of a bit of a moment for you, like a bit of an insight.

Nudging Biofilms To Trigger Dispersion

SPEAKER_00 50:32

That was a big insight. That was a big insight just before I moved in here, actually. I completely changed the project I was gonna do the week before I came in here. That's it. I was called Andrew and so I've got to change. Is that okay? Um well, thanks for letting us know. All right, yeah, I will I wasn't expecting it. Um I was gonna do the the terpenes on the bottom of boats. But I do like I do like um challenges and I do like looking at big problems and finding solutions to them. Uh I like the challenge of that. And the importance it is to health, and I'm driven by health and now the planet as well. So I'm looking at this. So I've since moved even close to the beach to Port Melbourne, and I'm about a 10 minutes walk to the beach. So I walk along the beach and I'm looking at shells going just after Christmas time a couple years ago. Well, how come these have got no biophalin on them? I just suddenly realized it. What about scrollop shells and prawns and stuff or see at the South Melbourne market? That always looks pristine. How do they do that? And the dogma is it's uh a chitin molecule called chitin, which if you put in the lab and treat it with acid, it's gonna work. But that's not gonna happen in an animal. It's just a structural it helps it's their spine basically, it gives them structure and strength and shape. That's all it does. It does not do anything to protect them from um slime growing on them.

SPEAKER_02 52:12

Well, it couldn't because there's obviously so many other um Cartisan-based marine animals that can get slime and gunk on them. So it might be a necessary component but insufficient, right? So that that wasn't it.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

So um so I have to give this a shot. Um it's worth worth a shot. I've got this great place, CoLabs, to to try things. I've got AI that's appeared into my life with instant access to the all knowledge as long as I asked the right question, and so AI and I uh started doing some experiments. And um the thing I've only just realized is for the first eight months, nine months, I got all these results. If I was in a laboratory, a research laboratory with a big group, I would have changed pro I would have been told to change projects within the first week because I was um interpreting the results the wrong way. Because I'm such a positive thinker, and I had an idea in my mind that something from shells was going to cause change the behavior of these biofilms, I believed the opposite. I just believed that whatever I saw was due to biofilms. And for example, um I knew that biofilms had a symbiotic relationship with uh vegetation, like the green stuff you see on rocks down on the beach. It's called sea lettuce. They have a symbiotic relationship. Um bacteria make vitamins for the makes sense, it's no different to the terrestrial plants. And the sea lettuce give the biofilm somewhere to live. And so um I got started grabbing some of that from down the beach and putting in this tiny container with some seawater in it. And if I saw some bacteria move more than five centimetres, I blamed it on the shells I had underneath. But it really, in hindsight, I knew I now know that biofilms on sea lettuce can sense things 20 centimetres away. We're just and I had it this far away, two centimetres away.

SPEAKER_02 54:32

So they're trying to move away from the shells.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

Well they're trying to trying to take over another surface. And they go, oh gee, that one's a good one. That lid of that container, I'm gonna jump on that. But I assumed it was coming from the scallop shells that are underneath the sea lettuce. So it's scallop shells, sea lettuce, a little bit of water, and then a lid. And because I saw bacteria, I go, yes, that's worked. But in I now know that no, it didn't work. It was because of the physiology of the biofilm, they loved sensor surface. I had one two or three centimeters away from them, which they jumped on like they would if there was a rope near a bottom of a boat. Um but I assumed it was trying to escape from the ice from the shells. And I I conducted my research that way all year until I uh started asking some of the newer AIs coming out, hey, I've got all these results, what do you think? Oh, it's contamination. You've got bacteria in there, you you're you're not seeing anything. And I realized that I'd been interpreting all my results the wrong way, but because I was so driven to find a change in behavior, because I was so positive, uh I was still in that pathway, and all I needed to do was tweak a couple of things, and I was on the right track. I hope that all makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 55:54

No, that does it's it's almost like um the irony of like so much of science never uses a scientific method. It's intuition, and then you you you backwards map it on and go, yeah, of course I did this. But it's kind of ironic that at this point you actually had to go back to using the scientific method rather than you know, you had to check those assumptions at the door, and you were lucky that you had a an AI that you could utilize um that could help you check that.

SPEAKER_00 56:22

You gave me a different opinion. Yeah. ChatGTP was very positive and um supportive of me. That's a little bit gripping. Everything that's I said, and when I went to Gemini, yeah, it was a complete opposite sarcastic. That's an opposite. That's just Gemini scariette. Which I needed. I needed that because I didn't because I'm working on my own. I've got no one else around to talk to. I need literature and stuff like that. So, and I was working in your area. So just let me explain to people I created what I had created was a really cool model in exploring biofilm behavior, and it seems to be a first. No one else has done, I can't see it published anywhere. And that's the idea of um putting uh a little bit of sea lettuce, maybe a gram, um, that's been taken from the beach at lowish tide, and um putting seawater in as well, because such a good buffering capacity has to be a really long tube. So I found these great hundred mil long test tubes online. Um and then I just add I treat shells in different ways, different temperatures, different conditions, combinations, different things, and I let them soak in water for a couple of days, and I take that water and I put them into these test tubes and I look for any change in behaviour of the biofilm. And uh, once I got myself right and corrected all myself, got rid of all the bacteria, I started seeing coming in in the morning and seeing a cohort of bacteria sticking to the surface of the water in the air hanging down. And I started uh refining that more and more, and I was confident I had the right condition. Uh and it was causing this thing called dispersion. Uh so even though I failed in my interpretation for about eight months, I did create a good model along the way. That was that was a good idea, and that that was an idea from the start of my experiments. And uh I just had to adapt the way I was doing things. Still positive, no, alright, done that wrong, but I'm still knowing I'm gonna do it. And I did find something along the way, and I've since taken that water from the shells after a certain condition. And I've done some biochemical analysis on it. And uh and they still need some mass spectrometry on it, but it it's looking very, very new and positive in how it opens the door. I found something that mim that mimics the key to open the open the bioframe up and let some bacteria out.

SPEAKER_02 58:56

Fascinating. So it's almost like uh that communication piece we were speaking of earlier. So I'm curious, like what's it been like, like, because obviously, you know, we welcome you in through the impact program, um, we believe in what you're doing, we're trying to support you making this happen. Like, what's it like working in a space with very limited funds? Um, and I guess as you said, like you didn't necessarily know much about the about the space. Um, how has that how has that shaped your like way of being and your way of doing? Like, have you noticed like it's been a big shift? Or um yeah, I'm just very curious.

Shellfish Clues And AI Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 59:43

However, it's been a good shift, and I think it's really important this should be important for all impact members is to use the tools that you've got here. Don't go out to too many other analyses, particularly anyone doing sort of biological like I am, because um the only equipment in the lab that um apart from just general general things, was um a spectrophotometer that Diagnosed put in there so they would get cheaper rent or something like that for everyone's years. Andrew managed to get some special plates to me from Merck for free as a favor. Those two things, if I if I was in a big lab, I would have taken that stuff, I would have put it through a massive spectrum, I would have missed everything. The gold is hiding in the detail in what I see in the spectrophotometer. And if I hadn't been limited as I am, I would not have found what I found. It's it's really unique, and it's an it's I found two needles in a haystack that stick together. I would have missed that for sure. You know, looking at a mass spectrometer or sending off the minash to get looked at, nothing would have come back that would have stuck out to me. Because I've had no, I've had to really analyze using the scientific analytical tools, which you would have done back in the day before mass spectrometry. This is old school fashioned chemistry, chemistry and biochemistry. Looking at the the only data you've got is by shining light through something and seeing how it behaves. And is there a fingerprint of what it does? And I found that. And so I'm very grateful I had no money. I'm very grateful I was so limited to basic tools. Because and that's why it's been missed, I'm pretty sure. No one's found it because they just crush up some shells, put it through, treat it with a few things, put it through a mass spectrometer. That's an interesting thing. There's a million things. They can't see anything different, they got no idea what they're looking for. And I noticed something unusual when I saw this spectrum. I saw a little bump appear where I didn't expect proteins to behave, and then I found out it was a nucleotide. What's that doing there? They're the backbone of DNA, and they um they're like what I worked in AMP kinas, they were nucleotides. What's going on? Uh so since I worked tracked that further down and I found out that the nucleotide, whatever it is, also wherever it goes, a peptide goes with it. Whatever I do to it, I see two messages, two fingerprints. One's a peptide, one is a nucleotide. So they're either joined together or one. Or they have a really high like a either side of a magnet. They they stick to each other like glue through some other ion exchange or something else like that. Or they're joined together, but they go together everywhere. Uh I would have missed that in a mass spec. I'm so great. Now I can go to the mass spectrometer and say, here's what I'm looking for. Um, and hopefully it'd be a lot cleaner anyway, because I've isolated it better.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:04

Yeah, it is interesting how um some of the best innovation happens when you don't actually have all the tools and things because it forces you to think outside the box, or you have to really start questioning from first principles. And I think yeah, it is really important, not for just for impact members, but for anyone doing innovation is it's like, what's your easiest safe to fail experiment where you can try and validate this without spending so much money? Because so much of science, you know, at universities, you might get a$10 million budget. So you go out and buy a$5 million piece of equipment, and then every time you have to run that, you need two PhDs running the equipment, and then the reagents every time are five grand to run the reagents. But in reality, you could probably use something that is 80% as accurate for$2. And it's like that shift is such an interesting thing to think about. Like, especially if we're going into a future where there might not be as much energy or resources, um, depending on how like fusion and let's say a whole bunch of other things go. But you know, if the Strait of Homu is closing down and us losing access to a lot of fuel is anything to go by, um, you know, we might have to look at exploring a world where we're using less energy and less resources. And it doesn't mean that you can't get the insights, right? It's just that you have to have to really try and show up differently and think about things um in a different way. And um, so yeah, there you go. Who would have thought that not having the equipment that you needed was an advantage um working in collabs versus an academic environment?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:30

Yeah, and why everyone else has missed it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:32

Are there any other um while we're on that topic, is there anything else that you've like, how's your experience been? Have you enjoyed it? Like, what are your thoughts with being a part of our community? I'm curious, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:45

I love being part of the community. I love the lab space. One of the pluses of doing something this is in a in a scientific department and a university, lots of people doing very similar things to what you're doing. Can't talk about anything, it's too dangerous. People might people pinch stuff because it's such a dog-eat dog.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:04

I find that so fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:06

10% success rate, grant, you know, you're driven to have the little edge on supernova. Anyway, um here I'm really enjoying being the only one doing that, what I'm doing. I'm really, therefore, I'm really free to talk about whether and what I'm what I'm doing, what they're doing. I'm enjoying that community, enjoying watching, I'm learning, watching Diagnose grow and some of the other um businesses grow and what they're doing. So uh I like what you guys do about the way you really encourage us to grow. Um different things you talk about, you know, your themes of particular materials. Um it's it's a really I like the architecture, the way you've created the building. It's so welcoming and calming when you walk in the door. You know, it's not white everywhere. Uh it's really I really love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:59

Nice. That's good to hear. And I know that yeah, the not white everything everywhere is a big thing, and I apologize about shining bright white lights in your face. That's why I'm wearing the classes. Yeah, I know. Um they help with the with the migraines, but you also look like a cool biohacker. So I feel like it it fits the bill. You know, um, it works for me. Um nice. Yeah, well, thanks for thanks for that. It's been like so many people just in the community. It's really nice hearing how everyone it really enjoys everyone else's company. And it's such a diverse mix of people, you know, you've got 22-year-olds doing stuff who haven't gone to uni, we've got, you know, postdocs 10 years, then you know, you've so it's like it's so nice having such a wide range of people and hearing how everyone can complement and support one another and then come to ideas or things that you might not have been able to find by yourself. You know, we we we often speak to the threat of transdisciplinarity um and I guess polymathy as being things that are we feel are really important for innovation, being surrounded by different thoughts, ideas, ways of being, seeing, doing. Um, and it's just nice to hear like that so many people resonate with that and find that as like a really nice part about being in community.

Finding The Peptide Nucleotide Pair

SPEAKER_00 1:07:14

Yeah. Yeah, no, it's really not really enjoying getting to know the diagnosed team and uh quantum brilliance and you know people would never associated with in the past in a university setup.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:32

Good. I like that. Um what's this is gonna be fun one? What's something like a belief that you held ten years ago where now you're like nut. It's pretty much the opposite.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:57

I think for me it's my belief in myself as a scientist. I am really good at what I do. But I didn't believe that when I was in science. I wasn't allowed to really think that either. Why? Why? Because it's in a narrow had to work whatever you wrote a grant on or you got you only could work on that and put it within your skill set as well. And um I I discovered I was really good at what I did. If I had those skills now and went back into lab or had the I would have had a different trajectory, different career, I'd probably still be there, which is not a good thing. I'd better better be out of there, I think. Um so it's the belief in myself. I'm really good at what I do, I'm really good at innovation, I'm really good at thinking left field easily. Just need to know something for five minutes, and I'm out left field, and I've got ideas for people and myself. So I think that's been good, and that's helped my personality as well, and um, my relationships with people, just having that inner confidence that I'm really good at what I do.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:14

Definitely makes a big difference, and it's it's it's interesting. The I guess the bell curve of like people very early on, if they haven't been completely broken by academia, they have that. And then there's this big part where people are in the middle of like the whole stay in your lane, don't do anything else. And then there's you know, the other side of the bell curve, which is like, uh, I know all that stuff and I'm gonna be creative and do what I want. And it's really interesting we find people either at that very start or at the very end, um, you know, that's where a lot of the innovators that we're having come to us come from. But I think that having gone through that journey and having the wealth of knowledge of being in academia and then having the ability to phase shift into innovation, um, you know, you can bring that wealth of knowledge with you, but not everyone has the capacity or the, I guess you could say the yeah, the capacity for self-reflection to be able to critique or question what patterns and processes from academia no longer fit in this context. But it feels like, yeah, like maybe because you actually lean on your intuition and your creativity a little bit more, that that's kind of allows you to break the mold of what a conventional materialist scientist would be.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:24

I've also learned how to access my subconscious through daydreaming. That's been something that's really developed in the last three two, three years. I always knew, and I'm a lot of people too, a lot of good ideas come through daydreaming.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:38

Most of the best ones, man, like Da Vinci, Einstein, Tesla, all of them used to use daydreaming or the liminal zone between asleep and awake. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:48

Um holding a rock and letting it fall to the ground. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:52

Yep, yeah. And then that's that flash of intuition and insight. So I think you're in good company.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:58

Yeah. And I kind of I'm too, and I was, you know, good to hear good to read those stories and realize you're not going mad at doing these things. But I there's nothing wrong with being a little bit mad. I've now learnt to just create a story in my mind. It's usually about what I'm doing and some sort of fame attached to it. I mean, that's how great I am and that's only human. And then people saying things about me. Um what was it? The nature paper?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:29

You can you can see the nature publication.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:32

Yeah, I I think about the nature paper. I'm waiting for it. Might be two, right? Might be two. Um yeah, I think about those things, and then people around that might say something. I'm really you're amazing how you found that nucleotide did this, and I'm going, then I stop. Oh, that's a good idea. I write it down. So that that's how I get my ideas. Um through daydream. Like even this morning coming here, I was thinking about I was thinking about biofiling on glass plates and if it could happen and to do it. And then I was thinking about um daydream about um fish tanks and interact with different people. And someone said to me in my daydream, so glad you got that stuff from prawns, because when you put it into water, nothing happens, no slime, and I suddenly stopped. I thought I was driving, right? Gee, that's a bloody good idea. I'm gonna try that. I'm gonna get two stiff fish tanks at home. One's gonna be control, and one I'm gonna put my stuff, prawn stuff, and the fish will survive because they're used to it with the prawns, and that's how that's how I work. I didn't then I put things into action and as well. But I get a lot of ideas just by relaxing or going for a walk, listening to music, and uh dishes allow my mind just to go free. And you know, in the past, you might have been talking, don't be lazy, you're just dreaming all the time, but it's not it's really strong, it's a really strong strength if you've got it, the ability to do that and trust what you hear. And the minute you hear what you're after, sometimes I can't, I'm not struggling thinking of something, or I've got a blockage. I'll go for a walk with some music, I'll have a daydream, it'll come to me, that's it, and I'll turn around and come home.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:21

And sometimes it's a really quiet voice. Sometimes you have to really be tuned in to listen to the whisper. But I I I resonate with what you're speaking to. I find that so much of my best ideas or things come from when I'm not focusing on it. There's a lot of learning science behind this, like the focused mode of thinking versus the diffuse mode. And that when you are in diffuse mode, it allows your brain to facilitate connections between different areas as you're cataloguing, you know, things that you're thinking of going into long-term memory. What do I associate it with? And that's shown that that's like, yeah, the most effective way for an insight to happen is is when you're going for a walk, because it's like a moderate level of exercise, which happens to, you know, just get the default mode network a little bit more preoccupied because you've got to walk. And then that's when these sort of things happen, um, which is super fascinating. I've I think it's um it's great to hear you speaking to this because um it somewhat feels validating as someone who was like, you know, very interested in science, but also felt that like the net like just focusing in that specific one way in which we're taught didn't really feel like the the whole picture. Um yeah. I daydream into the future a lot too, want to see where it's going. Well, it helps with um direction. Like you need you need like in a way, you need to have a vision of what you want to be orienting towards, you know. Not to say that you're ever gonna get there, it's a final destination, but I find that that is what can allow you to be pulled through in moments of duress or stress, or like, why the hell am I even doing this?

Choosing Markets And The Big Vision

SPEAKER_00 1:14:56

Pull through is a good good concept, but the I'm a big believer in energy, and if you're positivity, positive and grateful and believing all those things, that energy can pull you forward. And I I feel that a lot. So, like I'm a utility stage now, thinking of patents, thinking of um finally analyzing what I've got, thinking of funding, and all my daydreams are around those spaces right now. And I don't I don't control that, just my mind's on that space. So I'm getting ideas out of that and what feels good, what doesn't feel good, what ideas, which way should I go, what should I invest my last bit of money into?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:33

Um so speaking about future gazing or future casting, then what like if you if utilum works at scale, like what changes? What happens?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:45

Um changes at scale will um make a lot of money, I think. It'll be worth quite a lot. Um it'll make a difference in at least one industry. When I went to the biofrom conference, I was uns sure whether I should go in my where I'd come from, go into health with what I've got, knowing that it could take 20 years to get to market because of all the clinical trials and stuff. Or marine or go into industry, which is just straight away. And um I came away with a pretty clear direction, go to industry just to leave all that stuff behind. If someone's to buy the company and do that sort of stuff, because they work really well in chronic wounds, it's no doubt it'll knock on the door and open it up, access, expose the bacteria to antibiotic treatment. But someone else is gonna have to do that, or medical devices going into hearts and people you could stop it or so growing on that. But industry is just as needy for it, like block pipes everywhere. We've even cleaned out the one of the pipes here in uh crowlabs that was smelling of sulfur. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bacteria. I've tried my stuff on that and it just clears it and it's kept it clear. There's that, there's water purification.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:02

Um it just makes sense as well. Like, so you know, health might be something that you're truly deeply passionate about, you know. Like you mentioned before, like you you fell into this through through health. And I think the health of the individual, health of the environment, health of the planet, like they're all to me intertwined. But um it yeah, it makes sense that that's where you're thinking. And I think the well, the way that I look at it is like if you do well in industry, you might then be able to have the funds to be able to then look at exploring a project in health. So, like we always say, it's like find the find the way in which you can look at generating some form of income to begin with, ideally without having to raise any funds. Can you do a trial or a practice run with industry where there's a a real challenge that needs to be met and that your your tech or thing can make that happen? And then using that to be able to fund future research in other areas. Because with the platform tech like this, you know, there's marine, there's healthcare, there is um other areas of industry like weather stations or food.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:06

Food processing is$350 billion a year around the world problems with biofilms on processes and food recall and possibly it's huge in there. There's no solution. So you're right, and I we're definitely gonna head that path. In restaurants, even they have blocked drains because of all so much nutrition going down the sink. There's bacteria everywhere clogging up things, and they use caustic, terrible things to go down because they have to clear it to keep functioning.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:34

So it's so terrible for the environment, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:37

We could stop that with a natural thing. So I'm thinking that way straight away. Uh I've already got the fillers out for uh some restaurants with people we know to see who can if we can trial it, and if that's the way it starts, Sam, then that's fantastic, you know, because that's making a difference to the planet, which is part of my my vision is um stopping that and where it'll get out, and then we'll try other things. And I know it definitely works well in water. Uh water things.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:02

Yeah. What I what I find fascinating about your approach to this as well is like A, it's like really grounded in, I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of biomimicry, but that's fundamentally what I'm hearing you say is is like so it's quite interesting hearing you speak speak to that. It's like, how do we mimic this process in nature? How might we work with um you know, shell waste or other things um to be able to bring this about? But what I think is is really interesting is it it's less about like a domination and more about collaboration in a way with these microbes. And it and because you can see like us attempting to dominate, command, and control nature at the microbial level has led to antimicrobial resistance, all these other crazy things that have essentially meant that antibiotics, the ones like the first gen ones, probably going to be somewhat functionally irrelevant in the next 20 years. So we can't just keep taking that approach, you know. And the way that I'm hearing you speak about this is it it does feel like a very different way of looking at how we might work with rather than against these bacteria. I I wonder if there's anything there to that, I guess, way of seeing that that you think is um yeah, unique to your approach.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:20

I think the biomericry for sure. Um being able to manipulate these or direct these biofilms to go in different ways. There's even um even even for good, there's a slime that's on the outside. There's businesses actually making biofilms to access that because it's real it's a really good material. It's really different, it's really strong, it's works well with different platforms. I could do that, we could do that easily as well. Um I'm actually making lots of the bio much of that material at the moment uh with the model I've got. So I could see that happening as well. With antibiotic resistance, um just to diverge from it, the the chronic, the toxic stuff going down sinks that's not only about the environment, but it makes the bacteria antibiotic resistant to it toxic. They'll they'll you could throw it in their face and they'll just laugh back at you, and you'll be able to stop them. So you're making a worse type of bacteria and wreck an environment.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:25

It's like it's like accelerated directed evolution. Correct. It's it's this classic um short-termism and like thinking mechanistically about everything. Again, it's like it's I always end up going back to this because it's stuff that A really shits me, and B, I don't really get why people constantly think like that. But um, it is a fascinating thing to think we could, yeah, we just can't do that anymore. We have to try and find ways to work with rather than against.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:52

Just on antibiotic resistance, I've got my eye on that too, down the track. So you need to find a good microbiologist. It doesn't work in university. Uh cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:00

Well, we can definitely put the feelers out for that.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:02

What what what the biomimicry will also do is to sneak into the guards of antibiotic resistance bacteria and maybe change the messages that they're receiving and drop their guard to make them open to current antibiotics, uh, which is their guard is up now, they can't get through. So you know, wouldn't mind another night shopper or two doing doing that. Um fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:37

Um what do you reckon is the most under how do I frame this? Well, yeah, what do you reckon is the most under underestimated or under explored application for like biofilm science right now? Like out of those ones that you've spoken to, where do you reckon the biggest leverage point?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:56

Is dead the dairy farm carbon mastitis is a biofilm. Um I guess they're not a human and we don't see it. The agricultural setups have biofilms. It's in the tank, all their water tanks, it's in all the pipes that go and feed all the plants and everything, growth. And they also have antibiotics in them that sometimes keep the bacteria away. So there you're building up the antibiotic resistance and you're contaminating pretty much everywhere. Making it worse for people when they eat the food as well. So those sort of areas just get completely ignored. Sounds like you've got a big task ahead of yourself trying to.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:45

Well, that's the that's the issue, is you've you've got like a near-infinite, like this is the thing. Like, I don't know if you've read David Deutsch Beginning of Infinity, but it's like when you do create like a scientific discovery like this or explore a certain area, you know, it's just it's the beginning of people being able to do more research, and people could do a whole lifetime's work on every single one of those different verticals that we've spoken about. So it is a both an art and a science to be able to figure out which one to go down. So um industry is going to be the starting point for the.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:30

Connecting all of the rubbish in the pipe and blocking it. All you need to do is release the pressure a little bit in the slime and it's gone. And my our stuff can do that. So just need to activate that dispersion system. It'll open up, and there goes their strength. They're the bacteria dissolve, the slime's gone, and off they'll blind block. So I know that's a strength, that's what we're gonna aim for. It's gonna help heaps of industries and and then there might be some investment money, some money there to develop into other other surfaces. Like on it works, it doesn't work well on a surface uh on its own. Because what it does is it takes the top off, but it doesn't affect the bottom. So you need another molecule that goes with that as well. Okay, things like that. So I know its strengths, I know what we need to do.

Final Advice And Community Callout

SPEAKER_02 1:25:22

Uh if I was if I was going to frame that, it sounds like you know, if we go back to the semiotics, it sounds like you need to develop a language of interventions. So you might have one language or one way of communicating to remove that top layer or make that accessible, but then it's like, how might we communicate with other elements? So how might we, you know, uh cause it to detach or how might we cause it to diffuse? Like, and it's gonna be sort of figuring out which ones of those, you know, work for which context it's in, rather than a blanket like let's just use this one product for everything. It sounds like there's gonna be different sort of, yeah, I guess, ecosystems of products that are gonna be coming out based on okay. Interesting. Uh yeah, cool. Um right, last question, I reckon. If you could run one experiment at a planetary scale, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:20

Uh it'd be to get every hospital in the world to begin using uh natural ways to treat all of their sinks and their surfaces instead of the things they're currently using. Because that would stop uh infections in hospitals by 50% at least and antibiotic resistance increasing. Uh I think I'd do something like that, it's gonna make a difference to people's make a difference for the planet and also the people at once. And reduce all cause mortality at hospitals by so much. You could you could do that. That'd be I could do that, that'd be really uh really huge, I think. I think that's the best thing to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:22

Nice. Um all right, well, is there anything else you'd like to share or any parting words before we wrap it up and I let you escape back to the lab?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:32

Um if you've got an idea out there as a scientist, or even not a scientist. If you've got an idea that you think would work, might change something you want to do or build something you want to do, no matter how old you are, give it a shot. You've got nothing to lose. You might find it's a stepping stone to something else. If you need some people around you, uh See if you can find them. Or come to Colabs. Come to a chat with us all. I like that. Everyone's got ideas from whether you're three or four year old up to a hundred. Everyone has ideas and don't regret not doing them. You never know, you might change the world.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:26

I like that. Yeah, and it and it feels really like um doing that in an environment that is supportive is super useful and needed. So yeah, thanks for the little plug at the end. Appreciate it. That's all right. Thank you. Cool. Awesome. Well, thanks again. And yeah, look forward to the next one. That was okay. Yeah, perfect. Thank you for tuning in to another episode. Thank you for listening all the way through. My gosh, I still can't believe people do this. Um yeah, it's uh a delight to be able to bring these conversations, uh talking about innovation that's happening at the edge of emergence to you. I hope you enjoy them. If you know anyone who is working on any form of innovation or impact-oriented initiative that is helping humanity transition towards a more circular, bio based and regenerative way of being and doing, please put them in contact with us. We would love to find ways to support, help out, and explore potential symbiotic ways of relating. Thank you.