Global recognition of the climate change crisis has forced the world to examine alternatives to petroleum products that will reduce the carbon dioxide burden associated with fossil fuels.  Ethanol, fats and vegetable oils are a good start toward implementing liquid fuels that reduce the global production of carbon dioxide.  However, these liquid fuels have been selected according to availability and not design.  Advanced biofuels, produced through the design of microbes that ferment sugar to liquid fuel, hold promise for addressing transportation fuel demand while dramatically reducing carbon footprint.  Because of its scalability, this technology has the potential to significantly offset the need for new sources of liquid fuels. 

Taking a synthetic biology approach pioneered by founder Jay Keasling, our team has developed a slate of advanced biofuels.  Focusing on diesel as our first product to market, Amyris has developed microbial systems for production of hydrocarbons in large quantities.  Hydrocarbon fuels have better properties than alcohols for performance in our current fleet of cars and trucks.  The Amyris hydrocarbon diesel eliminates the problems associated with first-generation biodiesels, such as the cloudiness and precipitation inherent to fatty acid esters in winter temperatures.  Due to the extremely low solubility of hydrocarbons, the product is effectively removed from the environment of the microbe as it is sequestered into a separate phase.  This property eliminates the toxicity that many alcohols, such as ethanol or butanol, exert on microbes producing large quantities of fuel in fermentation.