Amyris synthetic biology: purposeful, predictable, profitable

Amyris is a synthetic biology company dedicated to providing alternatives to petroleum-sourced fuels and chemicals. We have created a world-class synthetic biology platform that applies the principles of engineering to biology, pulling together scientists with expertise in automation, biology, and computing to create an assembly line for genetically manipulating organisms, test the organisms for production of a desired compound, and learn from the design-build-test cycle.  This allows us to continuously improve our designs, reducing both the time and cost to go from concept to commercial viability. The result has been the creation of organisms that can produce precursors to an anti-malarial drug, diesel fuel, a cosmetic emollient, and multiple fragrance compounds.  

Amyris has used this platform to engineer yeast to produce a class of hydrocarbons known as isoprenoids. Artemisinic acid, a key component in artemisinin, was the first yeast-engineered molecule produced by Amyris.  The second Amyris target was farnesene, a 15-carbon branched alkene that can be converted via hydrogenation into farnesane, a drop-in, renewable diesel fuel, or chemically converted to a wide variety of other molecules that are used in the personal care, performance materials, and flavor and fragrance industries.  Farnesene has been in production for more than two years at the Amyris plant in Brazil using sugarcane syrup as the carbon source.  During this presentation I will describe the development of the syn-bio platform we use, the molecules we make, and the manufacturing facility we are using to take chemical production from renewable feedstocks from the lab to market.