Synthetic Biology: Replace Oil Addiction with a 'Sugar Binge'?
CategoriesToday, sugar is a cheap and sweet, if unhealthy and addictive, addition to our daily meals. But if the plans of an upstart biotechnology company established with funds from Microsoft's Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are anywhere close to what's in stock for the future, we may yet end up paying a premium price to satisfy our sweet tooth.
Sugar Beets have many food uses - Image: Northern-Crops.com
Amyris Biotechnologies, according to an article on ABC13, plans to divert sugar into the gas tank of our cars and trucks and - why not - airplanes as well. Their cutting-edge speciality - synthetic biology - promises to turn the sweet stuff into fuel. Not ethanol but gasoline or diesel ... it's all in the design of the microbes - they can be genetically engineered to do almost anything these days. What will happen to the price of sugar - and in fact anything sweetened with it - once the business gets going, is anyone's guess.Like President Bush's ill-conceived proposal to use corn for ending America's addiction to oil, biotech designer fuels have every chance to jack up our food prices by unbalancing world agricultural markets, diverting farmers into fuel production when what we need is real food. There's little difference between using corn and sugar for fuel. Both will turn out to be expensive in the long run and both are bound to benefit not so much the users of fuels and food but the multinational corporations that control everything from oil to chemicals, pharmaceuticals and factory farming.
George Monbiot warned two years ago that biodiesel will have a significant effect on the availability of food, as long as the raw material we use competes for its cultivation with crops that have traditionally fed people.
Amyris Biotechnologies, when it was first established with a $ 43 million from Microsoft Founder Gates' Foundation, planned to make an anti-malaria drug using synthetic biotechnology. According to the ABC article, Amyris Vice-President Jack Newman said:
"This was technology that was really great for the current application of making an anti-malarial drug and we said, great, pharmaceuticals, that's a wonderful model and then we realized, our market is in Africa and they make less than a dollar a day."That was at the time when scientists realized that artemisia or sweet wormwood, a common medicinal plant, could be used as a malaria fighter and was much more effective than the pharmaceutical drugs that were losing effectiveness against the malaria parasite. Since then, malaria fighting artemisia has been cultivated in many third world countries and the biotech upstart had to look for a more lucrative business.
The choice was biofuels, and with a fresh injection of $ 20 million in venture capital and a new CEO hired away from British Petroleum, the company is set to divert sugar into our gas tanks. BP itself is getting seriously involved in the effort, quite apart from its "donation" of a top manager. An unprecedented $ 500 million grant has been awarded by BP to the University of Berkeley, to finance a brand new Energy Biosciences Institute, the SFGate reports.
Why is there such a rush to keep us using petrol products or something very similar?Certainly there are other, more promising alternatives for capital to be employed in getting new energy technologies on line. But then - perhaps turning food to fuel may keep the great energy business "in the family".
See: Sugar in the gas tank? It might run your car someday
Inside Amyris: The Name, The People, The Beginning
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Just for archive purposes, here is the story...
Sugar in the gas tank? It might run your car someday
Heather Ishimaru
(1/29/07) - What if gasoline, diesel and jet fuel could be made without oil and made instead with sugar? An Emeryville-based company founded by U.C. Berkeley scientists is on its way to doing just that, with staggering environmental and economic implications.
This sugary solution could be what breaks America's addiction to oil.
Science has long understood how ethanol is made by adding sugar to yeast. But now using the same basic biological processes, scientists can re-program the microbes to make something closer to gasoline. It's cutting-edge technology commonly known as "synthetic biology" and it will change the way we fuel any vehicle that now relies on oil -- at least that's the hope at Emeryville-based Amyris Biotechnologies.
Jack Newman, PhD, Amyris Biotechnologies VP: "Why are we making ethanol if we're trying to make a fuel? We should be making something that looks a lot more like gasoline. We should be making something that looks a lot more like diesel. And if you wanted to design, you name it, a jet fuel? We can make that too."
Microbial physiologist Jack Newman was a post-doctoral student in a U.C. Berkeley lab when he met biologist Kinkead Reiling and chemical engineer Neil Renninger, also doing their post-doc work in the same lab.
They soon recognized in each other the perfect combination and common vision for launching a company like the one they now have, taking out-of-this-world science and bringing it to the real-world.
Amyris Biotechnologies was born with a $43 million dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to make a more affordable anti-malaria drug through synthetic biology.
Jack Newman, PhD, Amyris Biotechnologies VP: "This was technology that was really great for the current application of making an anti-malarial drug and we said, great, pharmaceuticals, that's a wonderful model and then we realized, our market is in Africa and they make less than a dollar a day."
So they decided to aim for a more lucrative market as well -- bio-fuels -- a clean alternative to petroleum products.
Within months they had $20 million dollars in venture capital funding and a new CEO.
John Melo, Amyris Biotechnologies CEO: "In a way we're creating the next oil."
John Melo was hired away from his job as president of oil giant BP's U.S. fuels operations. He started at Amyris in early January.
John Melo, Amyris Biotechnologies CEO: "I'm not a believer in, 'we will put big oil out of business' at all. I think the world needs big oil and the world needs companies like us."
And how does he see the company's potential?
John Melo, Amyris Biotechnologies CEO: "I believe by 2011, 2012 we'll be a $10 billion dollar company."
In company president Kinkead Reiling's office, a painted rock reads, "If you want to predict the future, invent it."
He thinks Amyris fuels will be available at the pump in 5 to 10 years.
ABC7's Heather Ishimaru: "You think 5 to 10 years is a realistic timeline?"
Kinkead Reiling: "Yes, definitely."Synthetic biology and Amyris could be compared to the computer industry 30 years ago.
Neil Renninger, PhD, Amyris Biotechnologies VP: "There's a little bit of wild west about it. There's a lot of energy, a lot of new ideas, and because of that there's a lot of progress that happens very quickly, and not necessarily by increments but by leaps and bounds."
Watch for that next leap to be an initial public offering.
To learn more about how Amyris was formed, how it got its name and its founders, read The Back Story.
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Inside Amyris: The Name, The People, The Beginning
The Back Story
By Heather IshimaruJan. 29 - KGO - UC Berkeley scientist Jay Keasling was the unsung hero of the broadcast piece. He was the magnet that drew together the three post-doc candidates who now form Amyris Biotechnologies. Keasling was an equal partner in the creation of the company and is a board member, though he does not work at the Amyris office like the three principles. Vice President of Research, Jack Newman says it was over "lots of bad Chinese food and good wine" at Keasling's house that the concept of Amyirs was born.
So what is "Amyris," anyway? Is it a made-up name? No, according to Newman, it "is an oil that comes from the Amyris balsamifera plant. It was cultivated as a replacement for Sandalwood when the supply of Sandalwood became low and price became high." Ah ha& very clever, makes sense, eh?
Amyris' next-generation biofuel could be used in current cars without any engine modifications. The new fuel could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 90 percent as compared with petroleum products. And biofuel isn't the only part of the petroleum market that could take a hit from Amyris products. Anything that involves oil as an ingredient could be produced by Amyris and its engineered molecules.
It's hard to imagine that VP of Development, Neil Renninger, is only 32. President Kinkead Reiling is only a bit older than that. And Newman is the old guy at 40. They were about 6 years younger when the idea for Amyris came together in Keasling's lab. One might not always associate market smarts with lab smarts. But this is one case where the parties are apparently multi-talented.
For Newman, Amyris is the fulfillment of a childhood dream. He was 14-years old, taking classes at Santa Rosa Community College, when he learned about the potential of what's now known as synthetic biology. It captured his imagination, and he dedicated his academic life to the goal he's now achieved.
- - -Cal to be hub for study of alternate fuel
Group headed by UC Berkeley wins $500 million grant from BP
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