Petroleum Holdings biology
LS9, a high-tech fuel company that’s all about imitating nature, has received $5 million in funding, as the search to derive alternatives to fossil fuels through plants and microbes gains momentum.
The company hopes to make what it calls “renewable petroleum,” a synthetic version of petroleum and other oil-based industrial products. (It has trademarked the name.)
Synthetic petroleum can provide more energy, per gallon, than ethanol, advocates say, and it can power the wide mass of cars on the road today. It also will result in less carbon dioxide emissions overall than regular gas dug from the ground.
Some start-ups, such as Solazyme and LiveFuels, have announced plans to produce synthetic petroleum from algae. Fields of algae will absorb carbon dioxide and other compounds and metabolize it into petroleum, the companies said.
By contrast, LS9 said it will brew petroleum through synthetic biology, laboratory and industrial processes that can perform the same function as algae or microbes. As a result, production doesn’t rely on live, single-celled creatures. Ideally, this will make the manufacturing process more amenable to performance enhancement or control. In a sense, LS9 will make imitation petroleum with imitation animals.
The company’s efforts are largely based on research conducted by Chris Somerville, director of the Carnegie Institution and professor of plant biology at Stanford University, and George Church, the director of the MIT-Harvard U.S. Department of Energy GTL (Gas to Liquids) Center and professor of genetics at Harvard University. Khosla Ventures is the principal investor, and Khosla Venture partner Doug Cameron is the acting CEO.
In a relatively short time, the Khosla firm has formed something of a microbe mafia by investing in a wide variety of companies that concentrate on harnessing the power of synthetic or real biology. The firm has invested in Gevo, a company spun out of the California Institute of Technology that hopes to develop ethanol production processes by imitating the metabolic processes of termites. Khosla is also one of the primary investors in Mascoma, which is building a plant in New York state to turn leftover farm products and other vegetable matter into ethanol with microbes.
Additionally, the firm had an investment in Celunol, which was bought by Diversa, a maker of industrial enzymes founded by Caltech professor Mel Simon. Simon has touted the termite ideas being developed at Gevo.
