E Pluribus, Unum: LanzaTech, Global Bioenergies Demonstrate The Biotechnology App Store

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) As Global Bioenergies, LanzaTech tighten isobutene partnership, the era of “swap-in, swap out” biorefining microbes comes clear, closer -- In France, Global Bioenergies and LanzaTech signed a new collaboration agreement to broaden the feedstock flexibility of Global Bioenergies’ Isobutene process and the product-portfolio of LanzaTech’s carbon capture technology. The news illustrates a new trend in the story of synthetic biology: the migration from the old “hardware” oil and grain refinery model to a model based on apps. In this case, proven, trained-up microbes that can each produce a target molecule from waste carbon.

As LanzaTech CEO Jennifer Holmgren remarks, “Since it is biology and the reactor doesn’t change, the production of new chemicals can be done with a flick of a bug… produce ethanol today, butadiene pricing goes up, no need to put more steel in the ground, flick the butadiene bug in for a campaign and produce butadiene while the price is still high. So you aren’t 2 years behind a cycle. I think of it as hardware, software. You’ve installed the hardware now just add a new version of the software or a different app.”

In the end, the most sensible way to sequester carbon is to convert it to a durable products. “If we can do that, convert waste carbon rich gases to a chemicals like butadiene which can then be converted to rubber or nylon,” says Holmgren, “we will be effectively sequestering the carbon in a durable good vs geologically.

So, fuels have a big place in the low-carbon society. And those that advocate them are those who believe in portfolio theory.

Holmgren agrees. “We have to globally take singles and doubles to get to the end result of changing the world’s carbon footprint. We cannot always try for home runs or hail Marys, continuing the football analogy, we cannot afford to fall so far behind in the global carbon game. We have to change how we think and how we behave about how we are going to have a future low-carbon economy.”

So, sequestration diversification, energy diversification, product diversification and feedstock diversification.

LanzaTech is currently building its first commercial facilities, which will produce ethanol from waste steel mill gases. These ethanol facilities will be able to change production to chemicals if desired through application of LanzaTech’s novel microorganisms. READ MORE