Amyris: UC Berkeley Alternative Fuel Startup Opens Prototype Facility
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By Bob Nidever in NEWS_Startups Published: Sunday, 16 November 08 - 12:39 PM (GMT -08:00) Last Updated: Sunday, 16 November 08 - 03:14 PM (GMT -08:00) |
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"Yeast, when left to its own devices, eats sugar and secretes alcohol. Amyris has engineered it to eat sugar and secrete hydrocarbons instead.
That, in a nutshell, is the business plan for the company, a synthetic biology specialist that spun out of UC Berkeley. Through selective breeding and genetic engineering, the company has created a group of organisms that effectively release industry-standard fuels, chemicals or fuel precursors when they go to the bathroom.
The company grew out of research conducted by Jay Keasling and Jack Newman at Berkeley. The two were pioneers in the field of synthetic biology, which is the art/science of decoding natural processes in a lab and then trying to recreate them. Why can abalone create hard shells out of plain chalk? Synthetic biologists try to figure out questions like that. [greentechmedia] MORE
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