Solazyme is a renewable oil production company and the leader in algal synthetic biology.  The company harnesses the power of microalgae to renewably produce clean and scalable high performance biofuels and renewable industrial chemicals.  Solazyme’s unique microbial conversion technology process allows algae to convert low cost feedstocks into oil in standard fermentation facilities quickly, efficiently and at large scale.
Microalgae have evolved in the presence of decaying plant material for billions of years.  Many strains of microalgae have evolved the ability to convert that plant material into oil.  While the fundamental metabolic pathway of oil production is extremely robust in some strains, there are two central areas where metabolic engineering is being employed to provide additional advantages above and beyond the native capability of these organisms.  The first is in the area of feedstock flexibility; the second is in the area of modification of the output oils and oil derivatives to tailor them for specific products.
The company is currently producing thousands of gallons of oil at scale and has refined that oil into the world’s first and only unblended algal based fuels that meet ASTM standards for biodiesel (ASTM D6751), petroleum diesel “renewable diesel” (ASTM D975), and jet fuel (ASTM D1655).  Solazyme has road tested its fuels for thousands of miles unblended in unmodified diesel engines.