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Licenses and Patents BioEnergy has assembled, through licensing and strategic staffing, core science and engineering competencies to support the development of robust processes for the recovery of fermentable sugars from cellulosic feedstocks, and for the development of fermentation organisms in the commercial production of higher value, specialty biochemicals. Our research team includes microbiologists who are skilled in genetic engineering and fermentation process development. The patents and applications describe inventions which enable micro-organisms, such as bacteria and yeasts, to convert simple sugars to desirable chemicals such as lactic acid, succinic acid, alanine, and variety of other chemicals currently produced via petrochemical processes. BioEnergy has spent over 14 years and approximately $100 million of invested equity capital and grants to develop a novel microbial fermentation system to genetically modify a typical E-Coli bacterium through the chromosome, and not just the cell wall, making the resulting organism much more stable at large scale production. By varying such gene splices, we can direct the organism to create a single desired product while minimizing or eliminating byproduct creation that can distort or pollute a large scale production process. We have extended our technology applications to yeast, thermophilis, and other microbial hosts allowing us to continue to accelerate market opportunities and drive down costs. In addition, July 2008 we acquired certain assets of OmniGene BioProducts with proprietary Bacillus host technology and metabolic pathway engineering expertise to develop strains for the fermentative production of commercial products. Microbial biocatalyst technology In nature, certain microorganisms take up sugars and convert them via anerobic fermentation to various chemical products which are then released, or expressed, by the microorganism. This process of microbial conversion of sugars to chemical products is generally referred to as a metabolic pathway for chemical production. Metabolic engineering is the science of altering the metabolic pathways of chemical production within microorganisms so that a single desired chemical is the final product of the pathway. BioEnergy’s scientists are experts in developing and using the tools of genetic and metabolic pathway engineering to genetically engineer an organism to express a single chemical product at large scale commercial production. This technical experience and skill is evidenced by our patents and patents pending for the development of organisms which express ethanol, lactic acid, xylitol, pyruvic acid, malic acid and succinic acid, and specifically their commercial success with D(-) lactic acid for commercial production of PLA bioplastic.  The basic approach to accomplish the genetic engineering involves modification of the metabolic pathway “software”, the genes. Our directed evolution process involves the selection of an organism which produces a desired chemical in its metabolic pathway and then genetically modifying the microorganism to effectively “knock out” the genes which regulate production of undesirable byproducts yielding production of only the specifically desired chemical product. Three distinct cost benefits can be achieved from this single product microbial fermentation process: i) lower feedstock cost (sugar instead of oil), ii) milder and less expensive operating conditions (less energy consumed), and iii) lower capital requirements as a result of fewer production steps. D(-) lactic acid and succinic acid We have licensed our D(-) lactic acid organism and technology to PURAC which has launched commercial production of next generation PLA bioplastic. Leveraging the company’s success with D(-) lactic acid, BioEnergy is using the same microbial technology platform to accelerate succinic acid development. With our technology license partner, The University of Florida, we have spent four years developing succinic acid and the work is currently in development phase. Based on the competence gained during the development of D(-) lactic acid, we are on the path to commercialize succinic acid within the next two years. Cellulosic technology BioEnergy has developed significant proprietary improvements to a well known biochemical process known as concentrated acid hydrolysis. In this process pretreated lignocellulosic biomass is hydrolyzed to yield sugars which can then be fermented into ethanol and carbon dioxide. Lignocellulose comprises cellulose, hemi-cellulose and lignin, each of which has different chemical and structural compositions and therefore must be treated separately to maximize sugar yield; as lignin has no sugar component it is separated altogether before hydrolysis and typically burned for its thermal value. The cellulose and hemicellulose components are initially pretreated to expose the sugar polymers to the acid to facilitate efficient hydrolysis producing fermentable sugars. In addition, because the respective sugars contained in the cellulosic and hemicellulosic fractions are different, the two have to be hydrolyzed separately with the respective sugars produced fermented separately. |