Biotech Company Ventures into Production of BioGasoline from Engineered Bacteria

An American biotech start-up company called LS9 is working on a process for the production of “renewable petroleum”, or renewable hydrocarbon-based fuels, using genetically engineered bacteria. The company is based in California, United States, and is founded by George Church (a geneticist from Harvard Medical School) and Chris Sommerville (a plant biologist from Stanford University).

Using the tools of synthetic biology and systems biology, their technique involves the modification of the metabolic pathways that bacteria and other living cells use to make fatty acids. In very simplified terms, fatty acids can be considered as hydrocarbons plus “other attachments”. By modifying bacterial metabolic pathways, the bacteria can be coaxed to remove the “other attachments” from the hydrocarbons, which can then be refined further to obtain “biogasoline”. The “renewable petroleum” produced from the process is said to be free of contaminants such as sulfur. The company plans to perfect their process and build a pilot plant next year.