Bio-Based Ideas

It's not often that I get to talk about what is actually happening at my own company which in many ways makes posting about what I really care about even harder. But as it turns out, today, I don't actually need to say much about all the exciting science, and development going on at Amyris. I don't have to because a New York Times article recently talking about all the great things happening at Amyris - with some things being more speculative than others. The article did such a good job explaining in layman's terms what it is that Amyris is doing, that I am just going to link the article to this blog article and call it "In Other Words". I recommend everyone reading this: What's that smell. Exotic Scents Made From Re-engineered Yeast

Another interesting and inspiring talk from TED related to bio-based ideas was posted not too long ago.

I recently read an article titled  “Microbial Biosynthesis of Alkanes” that appeared Science (Vol. 329, 559, 2010) was published by Andreas Schirmer et. al. By comparing nine cyanobacteria known to produce hydrocarbons (alkanes, and alkenes) to one species known not to produce any hydrocarbons, genes that exist only exist in the 9 other species. The genes that were identified this way became likely candidates for the alkane biosynthesis pathway. Two classes of proteins were identified: short-chain dehydrogenases or reductases, and the ferritin-like or ribonucleotide reductase-like proteins. Previously, it was predicted that alkane biosynthesis happens by decarbonylation of fatty aldehydes. The authors speculated that the dehydrogenase-like gene could encode a protein that initiates the reduction of a fatty acid intermediate while the ribonucleotide reductase-like protein could complete the decarbonylation reaction.  The authors noted that the gene pair classes describe...

There is one more talk I want to summarize because I thought it was really good: Susan Golden's talk about cyanobacteria was very educational because she reminds us all that when talking about algae not every algae is eukaryotic. According to her, cyanobacteria belong to the prokaryotic kingdom. There is a large variety of them out there with very unique metabolic processes and physiologies that can be exploited. Some fix nitrogen, others produce hydrogen, or other secondary products. Many are individualistic, while some form filaments that can be beneficial for harvesting. From a technological perspective, some cyanobacteria are very easily transformable – that foreign pieces of DNA can easily be absorbed into these organisms. From a research perspective, there are 10 genetic model systems providing a wealth of tools and information for further research questions. There are, however, challenges when it comes to working with cyanobacteria to extract oils for biofuels productio...

This is still from the SD-CAP Symposium. Another talk I wanted to summarize was Professor Stephen Mayfield's talk titled "Where we are - where we are going" The presentation slides can be found at the following location for anyone interested: http://algae.ucsd.edu/documents/SD-CABsymposiumMayfield.pdf Professor Mayfield’s talk was more of an overview talk meant to introduce the audience to the topic of algal biofuels. It could be divided into 2 parts: the problem, and the solution. The Problem Professor Mayfield started by making the point that between 1900 and today energy has been a rapidly growing market reaching $5.8 trillion today from just $ 0.4 billion. The future energy market is predicted to double in value within just ten years. There is an interesting correlation between energy use and wealth of a nation. The United States according this chart is one of the wealthiest nations in the world while also using proportionally more resources. The future growt...

Last week, I had the fortune of attending the Algal Biofuels Symposium held by the San Diego Algae Biotechnology Center which was founded by Professor Mayfield and his colleagues. The next few posts will focus on what happened at this symposium. Source: http://notafreemason.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/algae-oil.jpg The introductions were held by Professor Steve Kay, who is the Dean of Biology at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Kay noted that algal research has been steadily rising since the early 1990s again. Since the 2000s the growth curve of algal research resembles that of an early exponential growth as determined by number of publications with the keyword "algae". Key to this resurgence in algal research has been the advance of technologies in molecular biology, sequencing, and bioinformatics. Of note is that there has been an explosion in algal biofuels research since late 2008. The exponential growth exponential growth in algal research coincid...

Introduction In my previous posts, I have talked about ways of using different microorganisms to produce different things that are of use to humans. Two specific examples were diesel from fungi, or oils from algae. There are many other examples, some of which I hope to cover in my future posts. At the current time, the main challenge to many of these by-products is that they are not produced at efficiencies and quantities that allow for economical use. So how would you make fungi produce more biodiesel? How would you make the breakdown of cellulose happen faster? How do you increase oil production in algae? Although each of these questions, involves a deep understanding of complex cellular networks, at the base of each of these problems is a protein that carries out a given task. Increasing efficiencies of these proteins can help to increase the yields of the desire products. Today, we will look at one way, how proteins can be "engineered" by asking: What is Directe...

In the last focus section , we discussed how algae can be used to treat waste waters and mitigate CO2 in the process. Today's post will explore how algae can be used for energy generation. As already mentioned in the last time, biofuels have become very visible as of late due to environmental, economical and geopolitcal reasons. If at the heart of traditional biofuel generation lies in the creation and decomposition of biomass, then it would be easy to substitute corn or other less controversial land-based plants with algae. Although a lot of attention is paid to the use of algae in biofuel generation, and this article also mainly focusses on this aspect, it should be noted that algae can also be used to generate electricity by direct combustion of the biomass. Plans for these kinds of schemes are already on the way in Venice and a few other European locations [1]. Algae and Biofuels What happens to the biomass after it has been created depends on the type of biofuel that is de...