Microbe Metabolism Harnessed To Produce Fuel

September 11, 2009




“For the most part, genetic engineering is done by taking components, like genes, from nature and using them,” Keasling said. “But nature designed them for a different purpose, so the point of synthetic biology is to have well-characterized components that we can easily assemble to engineer biology and do genetic manipulation in a much easier way.”

The science


JBEI’s Deconstruction Division is developing new enzymes to break down the plant biomass into fermentable sugars. Once deconstructed into sugars, Keasling’s Fuels Synthesis Division takes over and engineers the chemistry within microbes so that they will take in sugar and convert it into fuel.

“Most of the biofuels industry in the past has focused on ethanol,” Keasling said. “Our twist on this is we’re creating biofuels that behave exactly like petroleum-based fuels. It can be piped and used as a diesel fuel or jet fuel replacement, which ethanol cannot.”

More affordable anti-malarial drug


Artemisinin is a compound derived from the sweet wormwood plant. Combination therapies that include artemisinin are effective and safe for patients in the treatment of malaria. However, because extraction of the drug from sweet wormwood is slow, labor-intensive and expensive, people affected with malaria–the majority being children in sub-Saharan Africa–cannot afford it. The process developed by Keasling makes it significantly cheaper and will improve access to anti-malarial treatments.


“Within a year or two years, there should be drug and anti-malarial therapies that are derived from our process,” Keasling said. “Our whole goal is to make these anti-malarial drugs more available and cheaper so that everyone can get them.”

Looking to the future

The future for synthetic biology is tremendously bright. “What we have to do is make it easier to engineer this kind of technology: getting people to work together, building parts and sharing parts of DNA that are well-characterized and can be easily assembled into large functioning systems,” Keasling said. “Imagine a future where we’re engineering microbes to make all of our drugs and chemicals.”


“The U.S. uses a tremendous amount of fuel, and sourcing this from plants–rather than petroleum–is an enormous undertaking, given how much fuel we burn every year,” Keasling said. “If we produce fuels from biomass grown in the U.S., we’re going to have carbon neutral fuels and a more secure energy future; we won’t have to depend on foreign countries.”

By Irene Chang, National Science Foundation

Image Caption: Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) Director Jay Keasling with Rajit Sapar in the lab at JBEI with a beaker of cellulose sludge. Credit: JBEI/Jay Keasling

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