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Environment

Greener Synthetic Pathways Award

by Stephen K. Ritter
October 16, 2014 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 92, Issue 42

Solazyme, South San Francisco, for developing engineered algae to produce customized oils via a fermentation process

As far back as the dawn of civilization, people have used vegetable oils to prepare food, generate energy, and serve as chemical building blocks. Although vegetable oils are relatively easy to modify chemically, they are not directly customizable for target applications. And modifying the oils doesn’t come cheap: Achieving the desired fatty acid chains from plant oils, or from petroleum- and animal-derived oils, is often energy-intensive, requires use of hazardous chemicals, and adds cost.

Solazyme scientists recognized that the pathways that plants use to make oils first evolved in algae. Synthetic biology and industrial biotechnology now offer a green alternative to custom-make oils by reengineering algae with genes from oil-producing plants, notes Peter Licari, Solazyme’s chief technology officer.

GREEN OILS
Graphic shows how biomass-derived sugar goes through a fermentation process to be converted into custom oils and other products.
Credit: Solazyme
Solazyme’s engineered algae technology platform enables any type of biomass-derived sugar to be converted into custom oils and other products. SOURCE: Solazyme

Algae convert CO2 and energy from the sun into biomass like plants. But because they float in water, they don’t need to build cellulose and lignin like freestanding plants. That makes them more efficient at producing useful proteins and oils. But Solazyme’s algae are not your ordinary pond scum, Licari notes.

These are microalgae, a microscopic version of the algae commonly seen, he explains. The company’s original one came from the sap of a chestnut tree in Germany a century ago. These white algae live on sugar instead of CO2 and don’t need sunlight to grow. The company refined its technology such that its researchers can design the fast-growing oil producers to selectively place desired fatty acid chains of any type at any position in the triglyceride backbone.

Solazyme’s oils are currently being produced in facilities in Illinois, Iowa, and Brazil with a combined capacity of more than 120,000 metric tons per year. The oils are being sold for food, fuel, and industrial products. Some of Solazyme’s key partnerships include personal care products with Unilever, surfactants with AkzoNobel, and oleochemicals with Mitsui.

“This is neat technology with great promise in the oils business,” says Eric. J. Beckman, codirector of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation at the University of Pittsburgh and a 2002 award winner. Most of the time with a green innovation, a crop-based product replaces a petroleum-based product, Beckman points out. It’s an interesting twist that Solazyme is proposing a biological replacement for a biobased product, replacing farm-based oils with algal oils, he says. “Given that intensive farming is laden with impacts owing to fuel, fertilizer, water, pesticide, and land use, and that the recovery of products from crops is multistep and often energy- and solvent-intensive, Solazyme could have something truly important here.”

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