Visolis, a company combining advanced bioengineering with chemical catalysis to provide sustainable, carbon-negative materials, today announced a partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA), which is building the leading platform for cell programming and biosecurity. Visolis aims to leverage Ginkgo’s extensive capabilities in strain engineering to improve upon an existing microbial strain for the commercial production of a key feedstock ingredient used to make bio-based isoprene and sustainable aviation fuels.
Isoprene is a key monomer used for commercial scale synthetic rubber production. Achieving the production of bio-based isoprene at scale represents a significant step toward decarbonizing tire manufacturing. Isoprene can also be used as an intermediate for high performance, lower carbon intensity sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production. Visolis’ production efforts are geared towards providing molecules with higher energy density, lower viscosity and better compatibility with engines than traditional SAF processes. Visolis’ SAF has the potential to work synergistically with these other processes to enable aviation through a 100% sustainable fuel.
“We are incredibly proud of our platform that is producing carbon-negative materials and fuels,” said Deepak Dugar, founder and CEO at Visolis. “As we strive to continue improving our technology towards commercial readiness, partnering with Ginkgo to accelerate our progress just makes sense. With their large codebase of strains and pathway expertise, which can shorten strain engineering cycles, as well as their scalable foundry capabilities, we believe we can work towards bringing our process to the next level.”
Achieving bio-based isoprene production at scale is one of the most challenging biochemical synthesis processes due to the inherent properties of the molecule, including its combustibility, volatility and reactivity. Visolis has developed a novel process by using a more stable intermediate, making isoprene through a two-step manufacturing process and enabling more efficient and reliable production. Through the partnership with Ginkgo, the two companies are working to further optimize the efficiency of this biomanufacturing process.
“Visolis has demonstrated early success in scaling production of isoprene because of their ingenuity in combining bioengineering and chemical processing,” said Ena Cratsenburg, Chief Business Officer, Ginkgo Bioworks. “We’re thrilled to collaborate with Visolis to optimize this innovative and sustainable process with the power of synthetic biology. This is exactly the kind of positive change that bioengineering can bring to industry.”
About Ginkgo Bioworks
Ginkgo Bioworks is the leading horizontal platform for cell programming, providing flexible, end-to-end services that solve challenges for organizations across diverse markets, from food and agriculture to pharmaceuticals to industrial and specialty chemicals. Ginkgo’s biosecurity and public health unit, Concentric by Ginkgo, is building global infrastructure for biosecurity to empower governments, communities, and public health leaders to prevent, detect and respond to a wide variety of biological threats.
About Visolis
Visolis is developing a decarbonization platform helping industries ranging from personal care to apparel and transportation achieve net zero emission targets. The Visolis platform combines artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and chemical catalysis to efficiently produce a portfolio of carbon negative chemicals and net-zero emissions sustainable aviation fuels. Visolis’s proprietary process transforms sustainable raw materials, including waste biomass and CO2, into bio-based chemicals with diverse applications ranging from drop-in replacements for commodity petrochemicals to higher performance fuels.
Source
Ginkgo Bioworks, press release, 2023-04-24.
Supplier
Ginkgo BioWorks
Visolis Biotechnology
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