Verdezyne Produces Adipic Acid Biologically

Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 09 Feb 2010 - 20:00 PDT

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Verdezyne, Inc., a privately-held synthetic biology company developing processes for renewable chemicals and fuels, today announced they are developing a new fermentation process for the production of adipic acid.

Verdezyne achieved proof of concept in this development program by demonstrating production and recovery of adipic acid by a yeast microorganism from an alkane feedstock. Using proprietary technologies, Verdezyne discovered and is engineering a proprietary metabolic pathway that can utilize sugar, plant-based oils or alkanes.

This is Verdezyne's first major milestone towards demonstrating an entirely feedstock flexible fermentation process for the production of bio-based adipic acid. The benefit of a feedstock flexible process is the ability to maintain a sustainable cost advantage regardless of future energy volatility. In addition to cost advantages, Verdezyne's fermentation process will reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to the traditional petrochemical production of adipic acid.

"Our estimates indicate at least a 20% cost of manufacturing advantage for bio-based adipic acid depending on the feedstock selected," stated E. William Radany, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer, Verdezyne. "Rising consumer interest in bio-based products combined with a sustainable cost advantage makes Verdezyne's adipic acid process a compelling proposition for future production."

Verdezyne is engineering the metabolic pathway to boost organism performance at lab scale and intends to partner for scale-up demonstration in the next year. In parallel, Verdezyne continues to make metabolic pathway improvements to utilize renewable feedstocks such as sugar.

"The petrochemical industry is looking for a cost-efficient alternative to produce this valuable chemical and we are thrilled that Verdezyne's platform is demonstrating considerable promise for commercialization of bio-based adipic acid," says Stephen Picataggio, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Verdezyne.

The global adipic acid market was approximately $4.9 billion in 2009 with its two major applications being polyamides and polyurethanes. Adipic acid is an important engineering resin for well-established markets like automotive, footwear, and construction and is used in everyday products such as carpets, coatings, furniture, bedding and automobile parts.

Verdezyne's Platform Technology

Verdezyne's novel combinatorial approach to pathway engineering rapidly creates and harnesses genetic diversity to optimize a metabolic pathway. The company's unique computational and synthetic biology toolbox allows effective design, synthesis and expression of synthetic genes in a heterologous recombinant microorganism. Rather than manipulating one pathway gene at a time, the company uses synthetic gene libraries to introduce diversity into each pathway gene. Combinatorial assembly of multiple pathway genes introduces enzymatic diversity into a metabolic pathway, and biological selection or high-throughput screening identifies the most productive combination of pathway genes.

Source
Verdezyne, Inc.

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