Cell Break: How Cell-Free Biology Is Finally Putting the Engineering Back in Bioengineering

In 2011, the California-based company Genomatica reported its success in rigging Escherichia coli microbes to convert sugar into the industrial chemical 1,4-butanediol (BDO). It was a feat of metabolic engineering: BDO is a key ingredient in the production of goods like running shoes, solvents, and spandex. At the time of the company?s announcement, 2.8 billion tons of BDO were produced every year in a multistep, fossil fuel-based process. Genomatica?s system neatly reduced all of that into a cheap, sustainable, one-step fermentation process. The company spent another year refining its technique and finally went commercial with the platform in late 2012. From start to commercialization, the process took about five years.