Visolis, Ginkgo Bioworks partner to improve microbial strain for biobased isoprene, SAF production

Visolis, a company combining advanced bioengineering with chemical catalysis to provide sustainable, carbon-negative materials, announced a partnership April 24 with Ginkgo Bioworks, which is building a platform for cell programming and biosecurity.

Visolis’ proprietary process transforms sustainable raw materials, including waste biomass and CO2, into biobased chemicals with diverse applications ranging from drop-in replacements for commodity petrochemicals to higher performance fuels.

Visolis aims to leverage Ginkgo’s capabilities in strain engineering to improve upon an existing microbial strain for the commercial production of a key feedstock ingredient used to make biobased isoprene and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

Isoprene is a key monomer used for commercial-scale synthetic rubber production.

Achieving the production of biobased isoprene at scale represents a significant step toward decarbonizing tire manufacturing.

Isoprene can also be used as an intermediate for high-performance, lower carbon intensity SAF production.

“Visolis’ production efforts are geared towards providing molecules with higher energy density, lower viscosity and better compatibility with engines than traditional SAF processes,” Visolis stated. “Visolis’ SAF has the potential to work synergistically with these other processes to enable aviation through a 100 percent sustainable fuel.”

Deepak Dugar, founder and CEO at Visolis, said, “We are incredibly proud of our platform that is producing carbon-negative materials and fuels. As we strive to continue improving our technology towards commercial readiness, partnering with Ginkgo to accelerate our progress just makes sense. With their large codebase of strains and pathway expertise, which can shorten strain-engineering cycles, as well as their scalable foundry capabilities, we believe we can work towards bringing our process to the next level.”

Achieving biobased isoprene production at scale is one of the most challenging biochemical synthesis processes due to the inherent properties of the molecule, including its combustibility, volatility and reactivity.

Visolis says it has developed a novel process by using a more stable intermediate, making isoprene through a two-step manufacturing process and enabling more efficient and reliable production.

Through the partnership with Ginkgo, the two companies are working to further optimize the efficiency of this biomanufacturing process.

“Visolis has demonstrated early success in scaling production of isoprene because of their ingenuity in combining bioengineering and chemical processing,” said Ena Cratsenburg, chief business officer for Ginkgo Bioworks. “We’re thrilled to collaborate with Visolis to optimize this innovative and sustainable process with the power of synthetic biology. This is exactly the kind of positive change that bioengineering can bring to industry.”