Amyris vs Novozymes: Who's the Best?

August 27, 2011 |

Background: This is a Sweet Sixteen (third round),International  Regional match-up between #1 seed Amyris and #5 seed Novozymes, in the 2011 Transformative Technologies tourney, from Biofuels Digest.

Voting: Open to all Biofuels Digest subscribers. Voting links are in the Biofuels Digest daily newsletter. To subscribe (free), visit here.

The winner gets: Most votes advances to the Elite Eight (round of 8), and a shot at the Biofuels Final Four.

The loser: Goes home.

Laurels: Amyris is the #1 ranked company in the 2010-11 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy poll. Novozymes is currently ranked #7.

The match-up: It’s a Battle of World-Class industrial biotech companies  Amyris took 67 percent of the votes in its first round battle with HCL Clean Tech, and 68 percent in a second round match-up with DSM. Novozymes prevailed over KL Energy by 71-29, and then edged by LanzaTech 52-48 in the second round.

Amyris has developed genetic engineering technologies that enable modification of the way microbes process (i.e., metabolize) sugar. By controlling these metabolic pathways, Amyris is able to design microbes, primarily yeast, to be tiny living factories that convert plant-sourced sugars from crops such as sugarcane or sweet sorghum into target molecules. Using its industrial synthetic biology platform, Amyris develops yeast strains designed to produce a broad range of molecules. The first molecule that Amyris is focusing on is Biofene, Amyris-brand farnesene, a hydrocarbon building block that can replace petrochemicals in a wide variety of products in the cosmetics, flavors and fragrances, consumer product, polymers, lubricants and fuel markets.

Novozymes’ core technology for the biofuels industry is enzymes that break down different types of feedstock into fermentable sugars for conversion into ethanol.  Within this area, Novozymes develops solutions for two distinct types of ethanol technology: cellulosic ethanol and starch-based ethanol. Novozymes cellulosic ethanol work is the largest endeavor the company has ever undertaken, with over 150 scientists dedicated to the effort.  Not only is Novozymes’ developing and offering the leading enzyme solutions for cellulosic ethanol technology, but we have also expanded our research focus into optimizing the pretreatment, hydrolysis and fermentation process steps.

Deep dive data on Amyris

Amyris’ complete Hot 50 / Transformative Technologies profile is here.

Category: Fuels

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