In this crossover episode, Absolute Gene-ius welcomes Steve Lewis, host of Speaking of Mol Bio and Director of Product Management at Thermo Fisher Scientific, for a wide-ranging conversation about PCR, molecular biology workflows, sustainability, and the science behind lab plastics.
PCR may be decades old, but it is still one of the most versatile tools in modern molecular biology.
In this crossover episode, Absolute Gene-ius welcomes Steve Lewis, host of Speaking of Mol Bio and Director of Product Management at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Steve discusses why PCR remains so broadly relevant across research and applied science, from human identification and food testing to gene synthesis and molecular characterization. He also explores emerging trends shaping molecular biology workflows, including multiplexing, assay design, customization, miniaturization, and the ongoing need for high-quality PCR plastics. The conversation also digs into sustainability in the lab, including why single-use plastics remain essential for reducing contamination risk and how more sustainable material sourcing can help reduce carbon impact without compromising performance.
In Career Corner, Steve shares a winding path that started in communications, moved through startups and home brewing, and eventually led to bioprocessing, biosecurity, synthetic biology, and product management. His advice? Cultivate curiosity, surround yourself with good people, and try not to drop your E. coli flask.
Jordan Ruggieri00:00
Absolute. Episode of Absolute. Look at that. Hope this one makes it in as the, as the, as the, as the joke, right at the beginning.
Steve Lewis00:07
We'll get it in post.
Jordan Ruggieri00:21
Welcome to Absolute Gene-ius, a podcast series from Thermo Fisher Scientific. I'm Jordan Ruggieri,
Lisa Crawford00:27
And I'm Lisa Crawford. Today, we're joined by someone some of you may already recognize, Steve Lewis, host of the Speaking of Mol Bio podcast.
Jordan Ruggieri00:35
So, yes, a bit of a podcast crossover today, but more importantly, a chance to bring Steve's perspective into this conversation.
Lisa Crawford00:42
Steve spends a lot of time talking with scientists about what's really happening in molecular biology, what's working, what's not, and where things are headed.
Jordan Ruggieri00:50
And in his day job as Director of Product Management here at Thermo Fisher Scientific, he is right in the middle of those workflows.
Lisa Crawford00:58
So today we get to connect those dots a bit, let's get into it.
Jordan Ruggieri01:05
Steve, thank you so much for joining us today on our episode of Absolute Gene-ius. Can you introduce yourself to our listeners? Who are you? What podcast are you on, and maybe a little bit about your current role?
Steve Lewis01:17
I'm Steve Lewis. I am the host of the Speaking of Mol Bio podcast, also within Thermo Fisher Scientific. Today, I am a senior product manager in the molecular biology business, overseeing the PCR plastics portfolio inside of the PCR workflow business. We most recently have launched a sustainable line of PCR plastics called the Sustain™ Series, and it's a really exciting product that has been out for a little more than a year, and it's been a great thing to work on to improve some of our sustainability and carbon emissions here at the company.
Jordan Ruggieri02:00
That's incredible. Well, I have a million questions. We don't often get to talk to other people who host podcasts. How did you first get involved with Speaking of Mol Bio, and what have you learned being part of a podcast?
Steve Lewis02:16
The way that I really became the host was, of course, there was a call, the business wanted to make a podcast about molecular biology, a very specific area of the life sciences. And we provide really the entire end to end product workflows in molecular biology for many of our research and development customers. So when the opportunity came up to kind of make a very, very specific podcast, I volunteered and then subsequently auditioned for becoming one of the hosts at the time, and then continued on to now fourth season being the host of the podcast.
Jordan Ruggieri02:36
We've always heard of, hey, Speaking of Mol Bio, and what you guys are doing over there. And I think it's even more exciting because we sit in very similar workflows when it comes to the products that we manage. I mean, have you, have you learned anything about maybe which PCR applications are really exploding right now in research or industry? Anything that stood out to you around molecular biology and PCR, as you've interviewed scientists?
Steve Lewis03:29
Yeah, it's a great question. So, I learn something every single time we do an interview on the podcast. But in the day to day, you know, looking at PCR in the real world, kind of in terms of techniques and applications, really popular trends are becoming multiplexing, sensitivity improvements, and assay design. We're, you know, in a unique space in that in my particular business, we have endpoint PCR as the focus. And internally in the company that's separate from qPCR and from digital PCR as a business. So being, you know, within these constraints of trying to identify ways to innovate in a very specific area, it's been a really unique challenge that I've definitely enjoyed.
Jordan Ruggieri04:25
So, I think you have a good point. Talking about how universal, you know, PCR is, and so many different techniques that utilize kind of that basic chemistry around PCR. And you know, I think it shows up across, you know, all of our episodes, a lot of your episodes. Why do you think it remains so universally relevant?
Steve Lewis04:47
It's application agnostic. It can be used for anything from human identification to contamination in perhaps food, food preparation, like with quality control at restaurants. The entire point of PCR amplification is that you're just trying to multiply the same copies of DNA, ultimately, or RNA, any, any, you know, kind of nucleotides to sequences, to ultimately either do some type of identification, or if you are doing something perhaps like de novo gene synthesis, you may be getting fragments or strings that you want to make longer sequences with. And so I think, because it is not specifically for, you know, let's say oncology, or you know, any other area of medicine or research is just specifically focused on nucleotide amplification of some kind, because you know, DNA, RNA, the building blocks of life, like the central dogma of molecular biology, makes up all of the life sciences. I think really just being able to scale up and acquire biological material in a way that has really good integrity, that makes it an enduring process over time. So we don't only talk about PCR within the molecular biology business, we also have, you know, cloning workflows as well as electrophoresis and other characterization technologies, as well. So it's a really fun area of science that I like because of its diversity of application areas that it can actually support.
Jordan Ruggieri06:36
It's something else I think that we notice on the Absolute Gene-ius side is, you know, when you're running PCR and qPCR, there's so many different ways and so many different things that you can do to look at it. So many different applications that utilize those, those basic building blocks of life. You know, I'm curious, do you see, like, beyond PCR, are there any technologies or techniques that might be helping to shape research in general, and molecular biology research in general? Anything else that might be kind of related to PCR that you see come up fairly frequently?
Steve Lewis07:13
Trends that we see in general are things like customization. I think there's increasing demand, for example, in assays that we're finding more and more biotech’s and pharma’s want to do their own customization of whatever products they're making. Perhaps it's even like a unique cartridge for an instrument, or even a unique instrument itself that requires a unique chip. And then the other kind of trend that we see, aside from customization, is really miniaturization. Both for the purposes of, you know, trying to decrease the cost per reaction in a lot of cases, as well as increasing things like sensitivity of our instruments. So without calling out a specific technology, or like a specific company that I think is really leading the charge in one specific application area, I think customization is becoming a really in-demand area. And miniaturization, I think we've, you know, hit perhaps a little bit of a roadblock. Although some new technologies are emerging, like cell-free synthesis, for example, in gene synthesis, where perhaps we can go even smaller than some of the ways that we currently do production of different life science molecules.
Jordan Ruggieri08:38
We see something very similar, right, in terms of customization, or how scientists approach the problems that they're trying to solve using these as tools, right. And this, to us, we really see them as tools to get to an endpoint. And there's so many tools in the toolbox that can help answer questions, depending on what you're attempting to do, and how you set up and provide framework to the scientific questions and experiments that you're designing. One thing I want to, I want to also talk about, I think it's something we haven't really approached, but you mentioned, as we kind of got into this episode, is around the plastics that you utilize. Just from your own scientific background and knowledge in the products that you manage, do plastics matter, and how do they kind of play a role in decision making across different research areas?
Steve Lewis09:35
Single-use plastics are a problem, if not one of the largest problems that we have facing science today. There's not really a better way to make sure that you're not getting contamination in your samples. And there's so many R&D and clinical workflows, they're really a necessity, both for doing your own research, perhaps, of an academic laboratory, or doing, you know, perhaps scale-up bioproduction. There's not really a better way, even, even if you had unlimited amounts of money, to make sure that you're actually doing science on the molecular products that you are trying to do science on or with. The reason for that is because biology and biological parts are small, right. You need a microscope in a lot of cases to be able to see these materials, you know, if they're much smaller than bacteria in a lot of cases. And so the problem is DNA is orders of magnitude smaller than that, right. And so contamination of samples, you may have some kind of a PCR inhibitor, RNase, DNase, which break down nucleotides, or you may even have other DNA contaminating a plastic, right if you're, if you're not manufacturing it in the right way. So with this challenge of really needing to make sure quality control in all of your either R&D or clinical workflows is at the forefront. You really have this idea that single-use plastics are the only way to go. But that doesn't mean that you can't innovate to make the problem better. And so that's something that we have done, as an I mentioned earlier in the show about the Sustain Series plastics. So we actually can quantify through the resins that we've chosen a material carbon reduction in our batch processes for our plastic products, and if you want to look it up and read more about it, it's called the mass balance principle. And our suppliers we're able to get our raw polymer resin material from, are able to use second generation source material, things like cooking oils, to make sure that we're still creating products that have the same quality control, the same performance, and also we decided to launch it with the same price, because it's just the right thing to do. We want to have a material impact as one of the science suppliers for some of these necessary products that push so much forward in terms of scientific advancement but are still kind of one of those necessities that we unfortunately are having to manage, not just in our business and company, but really across the world.
Jordan Ruggieri12:47
For 30 years, qPCR has helped power discoveries in gene expression, oncology research, infectious disease studies, agricultural biotech and so much more.
Lisa Crawford12:57
And Thermo Fisher continues to build on that legacy with innovations designed to improve qPCR accuracy, workflow efficiency and data confidence.
Jordan Ruggieri13:06
To learn more about 30 years of qPCR innovation, visit thermofisher.com/qpcr30. That's thermofisher.com/qpcr30. Products are for research use only, not for use in diagnostic procedures.
Lisa Crawford13:20
And now back to today's guest.
Lisa Crawford13:26
Shifting gears a little bit away from the super technical stuff and just trying to get to know you a little bit better and your background. You mentioned to us earlier that you were a communications major in college, and that's where you started. Was science always kind of the goal, or did you just start with communications, and then how did you end up going in a more scientific direction?
Steve Lewis13:50
My career has kind of followed more or less an arc of like four different phases. So early on coming out of undergrad, I was really focused on a startup company that I founded. I really led the kind of zero to one product development, got some exposure to hiring and leading teams, and ultimately actually met a lot of scientists as the customer segment for that startup. In that area, I became aware of bioprocessing as a technology and drug development capability, which is something that I did not know about, but I had been a home brewer, including when I was in undergrad. So this idea that you can basically brew, which I know that you know, perhaps that's blasphemous for cell culture purists, but I'm going to say it anyway. You can essentially brew, but instead of having the liquid be the product, right, like beer, you actually have a specific molecule within the liquid that you're trying to get out. And that's the case with biologics and monoclonal antibodies, for example. So I pivoted in 2015 and went back to school, got a degree that really focused on bioprocessing and scale up technologies. So I got to use really kind of the state of the art of bioreactors for both microbial and mammalian, and even in some cases insect, scale-up technologies, and so I took a deliberate pivot into the sciences once I realized that I could kind of combine my passion for brewing and product development. From there, I did a few years working in an area called biosecurity, supporting the U.S. federal government on what are called high biocontainment laboratories. I was ultimately led to this area of the intersection of digital technology, and then also biological technology. And that's how I found myself when I first joined Thermo Fisher, responsible for the gene synthesis and synthetic biology portfolio. I had worked a bit in the synthetic biology world, working in biosecurity, and so it was a really natural thing for me to make that move. But as you can hear, you know, it oftentimes takes a little bit of figuring it out, if you will, about where you want to end up. And so for me, I think my 'aha' moment, just in general, that led to that pivot and kind of brought me to where I am today, is that you can be passionate about one thing, and I was in undergrad, very passionate about marketing and communication. And then if you have an interest in something else, you never know where you're going to find yourself down the road, and if you just follow things that interest you, and that's kind of what I did. That's how I ended up in product development today at Thermo Fisher.
Lisa Crawford17:11
I think that's a really good point, and we hear that from almost all of our guests. I think when we talk about their career journeys, their biggest through line, or even their biggest piece of advice for others, is just kind of go where you want to go. Try new things, kind of experiment, and you never know where you're going to end up, but usually you end up in the right place. So that's probably comforting for a lot of people out there. Is there any kind of through line that you think has served you well, like from your undergrad all the way through to where you are, any skills that you have acquired along the way that you continuously use, and think you know if someone's listening to this, interested in maybe getting involved in similar areas? Is there any one thing that you would recommend that they work on or have available to them?
Steve Lewis17:57
Cultivate your own curiosity. There are things that you may not know everything about, but if you have an interest in exploring and intentionally developing your knowledge around things, your pursuit of knowledge, I think that kind of intentional curiosity that's then ultimately developed to hopefully gain more knowledge. In my case, that's what I pursue. That's something I would absolutely encourage anyone, anyone listening.
Lisa Crawford18:30
Makes sense. Is there anything you've learned from all of your interviews over the past four seasons at Speaking of Mol Bio that, you know, you've interviewed such a range of people with all different careers, diverse backgrounds, is there any takeaway that you've learned over the years that you'd want to highlight here?
Steve Lewis18:50
I think one of the common themes that we hear on our podcast is surround yourself with good people. I think that does absolutely hold true, and so you know, think about who can help you to be your best self and surround yourself with those people. I think that that is a common theme that I see on the podcast, whenever I ask similar questions, and that seems to be really strong indicator, I would say, of people who ultimately go on to be very successful in their field, like some of the guests that we've had.
Jordan Ruggieri19:30
Steve, one question we love to ask everybody that comes on the podcast is to name something, their most embarrassing moment. Something embarrassing that happened with them alongside their proudest moment. Have you had anything really embarrassing?
Steve Lewis19:46
Yes, I'll start out by saying I've had lots of embarrassing things. I think one of my favorite memories was early in the lab, you know, I felt kind of like a fish out of water. I did do some undergrad research, but nothing like when I was in grad school. So I was really excited, right? I had just discovered this new thing to me, bioprocessing, and I wanted to get some experience in cell culture and scale-up. So I remember in this very first class that I had that exposed me to E. coli production. It takes a little bit of time, right, to get the growth curves going, and can take upwards of 48 to 72 hours for some of these like 250 ml batches, right. And you're trying to ultimately get to a molecule, but before you get there, you've got like this smelly flask of E. coli, and they're doing their production thing in the media. So I remember, you know, I had my first lab coat on, first, you know, pair of gloves coming into like my third day of this class, and I was like, "Oh, this is so cool. We're going to start doing purification and try out chromatography here in the next couple of days.” Walked over my shaker flask, had been going, you know, overnight for a couple of days, picked it up, and then immediately dropped it on the floor and shattered it everywhere. And I had to replace those shoes, as well as keep everyone away for safety purposes. So I think everyone has a story like that, but that was one of my, like, "Oh, I'm so excited to learn this new thing", and then immediately, you know, destroy three days of work right off the bat.
Jordan Ruggieri21:43
You definitely learn something new, that's for sure. Not, not what you expected, but…
Steve Lewis21:48
Yes, don't, don't handle glassware, outsource that.
Jordan Ruggieri21:52
Steve. Thank you so much for joining us on today's episode. Absolutely great insight. I had a great conversation with you both on the science and the career end. Thank you so much.
Steve Lewis22:03
Thank you, appreciate it.
Lisa Crawford22:05
That was Steve Lewis, Director of Product Management at Thermo Fisher Scientific. You can find all episodes of Speaking of Mol Bio wherever you get your podcasts and stay tuned for conversations with all new Gene-iuses coming soon. Stay curious, and we'll see you next time.
Jordan Ruggieri22:20
This episode of Absolute Genius was produced by Sarah Briganti, Matt Ferris, and Matthew Stock. Products mentioned in this episode are for research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.