Spanish Neol Bio signs agreement with US NREL to develop microorganisms able to produce oleochemicals from sustainable feedstocks
The blog followers already know Neol Bio through a post published early this
year (Neol
Bio in the spotlight – Advanced bioprocesses for the oleochemical industry).
It is one of the most promising companies of the Spanish biotechnology industry.
In fact, the US organization BIO
(Biotechnology Innovation Organization) has recently published a report
positioning Neol Bio beside the main international companies of that sector.
Today, the company heardquarted in
Granada announced the signing of a collaboration agreement with the U.S.
Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable
Energy Laboratory (NREL) to develop microorganisms able to produce fatty
alcohols from lignocellulosic sugars (see press
release).
This collaboration is geared towards
meeting DOE’s goal of achieving cost-competitive liquid transportation fuels
derived from renewable lignocellulosic biomass.
Over the last couple of years, NREL has been working with a species of
yeast called Rhodosporidium toruloides, which is an oleaginous yeast that accumulates
a large percentage of its cell mass as triglycerides (see article). Such triglycerides can be upgraded to fuels
with diesel-like properties. However, these lipids are difficult to extract
from inside the cells making the process prohibitively expensive. Neol Bio has
engineered a yeast to produce fatty alcohols which are secreted from the cell
thus potentially making the extraction much simpler and cost effective.
Video: MicroBiOil® is the platform of Neol Bio to produce high added value oils and microbial derived oleochemicals from renewable sources.
Neol have provided their strains to NREL for them
to analyze fatty alcohol productivity on their lignocellulosic hydrolysates. Preliminary
tests of replicating Neol Bio’s published results on rich growth media are
underway. Following the successful completion of these experiments, NREL will
move into the next phase of fermentations using pretreated and enzymatically
hydrolyzed corn stover as a sole carbon source for the organism. These sets of fermentations will establish
the baseline fatty alcohol production metrics from NREL’s standard cellulosic
feedstock and demonstrate the potential for large- scale deployment of this
technology.