“Conan the Bacterium” gets a gig, as Deinove develops fuels, chemicals via the world’s toughest bacteria

With a $8 million award from the French government, Deinove heads for the next level in developing deinococcus as a biofuels and chemicals platform.

What’s next for consolidated bioprocessing via the roughest, toughest bacteria genus that Mother Nature has yet devised?

At some point in your reading, you may have run across the assertion that, should World War Three rain destruction upon us, cockroaches will inherit the earth.

What is generally not added is that, should conditions here on Mother Earth become so hideous that even the cockroaches keel over, you might find that some deinococcus bacterium will be shouting “I’m the King of the World” from whatever remains of the rooftops.

Ask Guinness.

It’s true. The Guinness Book of World Records cites deinococcus radiodurans as the roughest, toughest bacteria in the world. In scientific circles with a sense of humor, it’s been nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium”.

How tough?

No water? No worries mate, it survives dehydration. Radiation? Bring it on. Acid? No problemo, amigo. Temperatures below the threshold for life? Won’t even need a jacket. How about the vacuum of space? Won’t need a toot from your oxygen tank.

We suspect this little dude is so tough it could even stand up to six months of pummeling from the oil lobby.

Given that the extinction-level events are generally rare — the fulsome and destructive attentions of the oil lobby might well be descending upon our little friend in the here and now — because a French early-stage company called Deinove, after assembling a library of 6,000 deinococcus strains and a platform of synthetic biology, has discovered a whole range of oil-replacing activities that deinococcus can perform — including the production of fuels and chemicals after being fed a diet of biomass.

And you thought that the hottest application the French had for bacteria was their brilliant line-up in cheese. Well, stand aside roquefort and gruyére.

Here’s a cool set under development, broadly grouped under the title “deinotechnologies”, and run inside what Guiness may come to recognize as the world’s smallest factory.

How small?

Well, you can fit roughly 8 billion of these critters — slightly more than the human population of earth — in a space the size of a cube of sugar.

Enter Deinove

Their unique genetic and metabolic potentials have been recognized over the past three years, since Deinove was founded in 2010, by investors like Truffle Capital, and industrial partners like the sugar giant Tereos. The company is also listed on the Alternext exchange as ALDEI.

The South of France biotech cluster

The company just moved into new space within the Montpellier biotech cluster. Yes, there’s something of great scientific interest going on down along the French South Coast besides studies in suntan lotion along the beachside of Palavas-les-Flots.

Montpellier should be on your radar for biotech as well as some fine dining. It’s home top the Eurobiomed cluster – and and major research institutes such as CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique – French National Centre for Scientific Research), INRA (Institut national de la recherche agronomique – French National Institute for Agricultural Research) and CIRAD (Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement – French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development), and their laboratories.

The technology itself

If you’ll recall some time back, there was a lot of chatter about “consolidated bioprocessing” as the “holy grail of biofuels” – that is, the ability of one organism to extract sugars and then ferment them in to one target product. Something that is usually done with one organisms to extract the sugars then another to do the fermentation.

Companies like Novozymes shied away from the opportunity, in general — the thinking was that it would take too long, and cost too much to optimize the organisms. So, companies like Mascoma took the lead and proceeded along those lines.

For a long time, it was a matter of “enzymes” vs “CBP”. But as it turns out, CPB can also be seen as a booster rather than a replacement.

In the case of Deinove, they’ve built a library of 6,000 strains of Deinococcus bacteria, which works on both C5 and C6 sugars, is stable, can be readily modified as with e.coli. And they are toughies — for one, they are therophiles and can tolertae very high temperatures and still produce, reducing the need to cool the water between processing steps. Plus, they can handle concentrations of up to 20% ethanol and keep metabolizing.

20% – that’s very much in the “don’t try this at home” category. Amazing little creatures, and Budweiser may well wish that we people were more like them bacteria.

Deinove generated a degree of global attention last year when a Deinove bacterium turned wheat-based biomass into ethanol, without additives (enzymes, yeast, antibiotics or antiseptics), a result that led to the afore-mentioned partnership with Tereos to carry forward the pre-industrial development of this process, which is still at low yield.

Interesting thing about their broth — it’s pink. That’s because of the natural production of caretenoids – same family of molecules that turn shrimp and flamingos pink, as well.

The company’s visibility jumped an order in magnitude this week with the news that ADEME — the French environment and energy management agency — is making an $8 million grant to company to accelerate its industrial processes development program – with a focus on the chemicals side.

In this case, think bioisoprenoids. Try and say that three times, real fast. But it’s not as mysterious as it sounds. If you have a car, it has tires, and those are made of isoprene.

In addition to isoprene, there are carotenoids, linalool, geraniol and myrcene in this mix. These chemical intermediates are made today from petroleum and used in specialty chemicals, fragrances, animal feed, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals. All part of replacing the barrel of petroleum with renewables.

The DEINOCHEM programme and isoprenoids

The DEINOCHEM program is intended to develop the production of at least 2 isoprenoid compounds derived from biomass within three and a half years. Feedstocks include wheat straw, corn stover and cobs, energy crops, and industrial and urban waste.

ADEME and the General Investment Commission which brings together the relevant ministers (Ministry of Industrial Renewal, Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Ministry of Ecology, Energy and Sustainable Development, Ministry of Agriculture, Agrifood and Forests) will offer financial support in the form of repayable advances. A formal agreement has been given by Prime Minister Jean- Marc Ayrault, and DEINOVE is currently negotiating the final details of the project’s implementation with ADEME.

“This is one of the highest levels of financial backing ever granted in plant chemistry from the French government. Our country has clearly placed biotechnologies at the heart of its industrial innovation program,” commented Emmanuel Petiot, CEO of DEINOVE.

Who’s a customer for what?

Typically, we’ve been engaging in talks with major agroindustrial, chemical or oil companies ,” Petiot told the Digest. “Usually, it’s companies who are looking for innovation. For example, in the chemicals space, BASF acquired Verenium, and partnered with companies like Genomatica.  That’s just an example of sector activity, not a reflection of specific conversations we might have had. But it demonstrates that major companies are in a kind of shopping mode when it comes to this wave of innovation.

“We’re also talking to companies that have wide availablity of feedstock, and that have the perception that they are underutilizing the feedstock and that they could be creating more value. Also the engineering companies, who have an interest in what the technology can do and how that may impact their opportunities. So, the interest is very much all over the value chain.”

The bottom line

We’ve been following isoprenoids for some time — after all, it makes a lot of sense to replace not only the fossil fuels in the tank, but across the value chain. — to date, DuPont Industrial Bioscineces has been all over bioisoprene one with a fermentation process developed in tandem with Goodyear.

This effort has a broader set of targets — and offers some high-value, small-volume markets for companies like Deinove to get their technologies into as they scale up, finance, and improve the economics on the road to the fuels markets.

As we have remarked before — it doesn’t make any difference at all if you have a technology to wean the planet off fossil fuels if you don’t have the financial strength and have demonstrated technology.

So, an oasis in the valley of death is just what the doctor ordered — and here we find a good candidate.

The toughest of bacteria might well survive radiation, plague, the vacuum of outer space, baths of harsh acids — but we haven’t found a bacteria yet that can live long without a supply of dollars. It’s the sine qua non of industrial microbiotech.