A Better Biofuel

A California biotech company is engineering microbes to produce cheap biofuels that could out-compete ethanol.

Stroll the streets of San Francisco and you’re likely to overhear someone talking about biofuels. It’s the latest technology wave to hit the Bay Area, and scientists and investors are swarming toward any startup claiming a better way to make ethanol or biodiesels. Amyris Biotechnologies may actually have found one. Having previously reengineered microbes so that they would produce a malaria drug, the company is now drawing on its expertise at creating efficient bacterial factories to cheaply churn out novel types of biofuels.
Amyris is one of the first companies to spring from the relatively new field of synthetic biology. Unlike the conventional genetic engineering currently used in the manufacture of antibiotics and protein drugs such as insulin, synthetic biology involves hacking the entire metabolic system–changing the structure of some proteins, altering the expression of others, and adding in genes from other organisms–to create an efficient microbial machine. “We think of biological components as parts you assemble and try to get to function as a whole,” says Jay Keasling, a bioengineer at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of Amyris’s cofounders.

While the company is still a long way from having a practical biofuel, its progress will be under close watch. As ethanol is being used more and more for transportation fuel, biofuels have captured the attention of investors. Indeed, in 2001, when Keasling and colleagues first thought about making biofuels, Amyris found very little investor interest. That has changed. “We went out with the aim of raising $7 million [during a 2006 round of financing] and ended up with $20 million,” says Newman. “We had to turn down multiple investors.”

Techbnology Review