Climate Changed
Exxon Makes a Biofuel Breakthrough
- J. Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics teamed with Exxon Mobil
- Technique could lead to commercialization of algae-based fuels
Euglena, a single-celled microscopic algae, known as Midorimushi in Japanese, is cultivated in a reactor at the Euglena Co. laboratory in the University of Tokyo, in Tokyo, Japan, on May 8, 2013.
Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
It’s the holy grail for biofuel developers hoping to coax energy out of algae: Keep the organism fat enough to produce oil but spry enough to grow quickly.
J. Craig Venter, the scientist who mapped the human genome, just helped Exxon Mobil Corp. strike that balance, with a breakthrough that could enable widespread commercialization of algae-based biofuels. Exxon and Venter’s Synthetic Genomics Inc. are announcing the development at a conference in San Diego on Monday.