biotechnology

Glori, seeking oil with microbes, files to go public

In the quest to get more oil from the ground, Glori Energy is enlisting microbes.

The Houston, Texas-based company today filed to go public on the stock market in a bid to raise $115 million with a biotechnology designed to extract more oil from existing wells.

Well more than half of the oil in oil wells typically stays trapped underground because conventional techniques can't reach it all. About 10 percent to 15 percent of available oil can come out based on pressure. Then drillers flood wells with water in one well to help push the oil out of a … Read more

Joule adds CO2 to sunlight to make fuel

Start-up Joule Biotechnologies is sort of a mashup of the fuels, solar, and biotechnology industries.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company on Monday is disclosing its technology and business plans for making ethanol and other liquid fuels from genetically manipulated microorganisms that have been fed only sunlight and carbon dioxide.

In a break with biofuels companies, Joule says its HelioCulture system works without a biomass feedstock, such as algae or others plants. Instead, the company's engineered organisms grow through photosynthesis in a brackish water solution and directly excrete fuel or commercial chemicals.

"We set out in sort of a '… Read more

VC investments sink 51 percent

Venture capitalists are drawing their purse strings tighter than ever in reaction to the economic downturn.

Money from VCs to start-ups and IPOs sunk to $3.7 billion in the second quarter, a drop of 51 percent from $7.5 billion in the year-ago quarter. This marks the lowest ongoing level of venture capital funding over the past 12 years, according to a MoneyTree report released Tuesday by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). The report was based on statistics from Thomson Reuters.

Although VC spending rose slightly from the first quarter's $3.2 billion, the ongoing … Read more

From sugar water to Spandex

Someday, your Spandex tights and car dashboard may be made out of sugar cane rather than petroleum, if start-up Genomatica succeeds on its plans.

The San Diego-based start-up on Tuesday said that it has reached a technical milestone in converting sugar--derived from sugar cane or beets--into an industrial plastic called 1,4-butanediol, or BDO. It's a material that's appeals to the auto, apparel, and pharmaceutical industries for a variety of uses.

Genomatica uses a genetically modified strain of E.coli bacteria to convert sugar water into BDO through fermentation. On Tuesday it said it demonstrated that it can … Read more

A robot powered by heart muscles

You can't accuse this robot of not having any heart.

A group of South Korean researchers from the Nano/Micro System Laboratory at Seoul National University has created a miniature robot powered by living heart tissue. The "microrobot" was designed to be injected into the human body and loaded up with a dissolving agent to clear blockages in arteries and other biological systems.

The scientists created the miniature robot by growing heart muscles from a rat on an elastic polymer called polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS).

As this video shows (AVI format), the robot scoots along on its three legs, … Read more