Bioengineering Meets Computational Modeling
Monday, July 14, 2008
Genomatica is a leader in the fields of bioengineering and computational modeling. Based in San Diego, CA, the company was founded in 2000 by Christophe Schilling and Bernhard Palsson with a mission to enable bio-manufactured chemical technology. With experience and expertise in the fields of computational modeling and chemical manufacturing, the company creates biological and metabolic models with predictive capabilities. This technology allows the company to adaptively evolve living cells to become biological factories capable of sustainably producing a variety of chemical and biological products. According to Genomatica’s President and Chief Science Officer Christophe Schilling, “This technology and others that are rounding out our platform, are now enabling us to unlock large market opportunities for biologically-derived products including small molecule chemicals and fuels, as well as protein-based therapeutics." Genomatica’s approach is not a new innovation, rather, an improvement upon current technologies by combining advanced modeling techniques with biological and chemical manufacturing. According to Mark Burk, Genomatica’s senior vice president for research and commercial development, “Genomatica is developing processes for the clean, sustainable manufacture of industrial chemicals and fuels from renewable feedstocks…” The company will be joining the city of San Diego’s initiative to become a center for green technology innovation. As a consequence of this initiative, several other companies have begun to invest in bioengineering. Specifically, Amyris, LS9, Synthetic Genomics, Novomer, and Segitis have all invested in developing similar technology. All of them, however, incorporate some amount of chemical processes in the development of their final products. Genomatica is the only company exclusively using biological processes and according to VentureBeat, of the firms receiving funding for biofuel R&D, Genomatica has received the most funding to date; approximately $24 million. Moreover, Genomatica’s IP puts it well ahead of the rest of the pack as the company’s core technology is based on its US Patent 7,127,379 entitled “Method for the Evolutionary Design of Biochemical Reaction Networks.” To further consolidate its position as an industry leader, Genomatica has signed exclusive licensing agreements with both the University of California – San Diego and the Pennsylvania State University. The licensed technology is a core part of Genomatica’s Integrated Metabolic Engineering Platform.
Given the recent “green” drive by San Diego and indeed the rest of the world, Genomatica has a large market potential that will only grow with time. This innovation will undoubtedly affect the environment in a positive way since biofuels are both sustainable and clean. The technology has already made an impression on the US government as is evident by the research funding provided to Genomatica by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This funding will be used to expand Genomatica’s research capabilities as currently the company has no plans to reach a large-scale production capacity. According to VentureBeat, the company is in the process of developing “bolt-on” facilities to existing, multi-billion dollar plants owned by larger companies.” This partnership model allows Genomatica to invest more heavily in R&D while licensing its technology for production and sale. In short, the biological and chemical outputs produced by Genomatica’s proprietary technology are cheaper, cleaner, and more abundant than conventional energy products.
Labels: Advanced Computing
