Tag: Biofuels

California-based Amyris has used breakthroughs in synthetic biology to reinvent biofuels. To turn its technology into an industrial process, it has headed to the land of sugar: Brazil.

The four-lane Anhang?era Highway leads northwest from Brazil's financial capital, Sדo Paulo, into some of the most productive agricultural land in the world. The view from a car window reveals plantations of hairy eucalyptus trees and cow pastures rife with termite mounds. Fields of sugarcane roll out of sight over the hilltops.

Scientists are optimizing a lipid-producing microbe to make biofuels.


While most attempts to engineer biofuel-producing microbes have focused on well-known organisms such as yeasts and E. coli, scientists also hope to co-opt the unique metabolic functions of some of the microbial world's less-studied creatures. Anthony Sinskey and his team at MIT have been cataloguing the genomic secrets of Rhodococcus bacteria, soil-dwelling microbes known to eat a variety of toxic compounds. The goal is to make a biodiesel-producing organism that can use a variety of sources as fuel. "We have done a lot of the basic chemistry and biology," says Sinskey. "Now we need to figure out how to maximize yields."