[Mb-civic] J. Craig Venter's Next Little Thing - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

J. Craig Venter's Next Little Thing:
The man who mapped the human genome has a new focus: using microbes to 
create alternative fuels.

By Michael S. Rosenwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 27, 2006; D01

J. Craig Venter, maverick biologist, wants to cure our addiction to oil. 
To do so, he proposes creating a designer microbe -- the heart of a 
biological engine -- from scratch, then adding genes culled from the sea 
to turn crops such as switch grass and cornstalks into ethanol.

While he's at it, he'd like to modify or devise microorganisms to 
produce a steady stream of hydrogen.

Either could prompt a major shift in the economics of the energy 
industry and in the process bring Venter to a secondary goal: showing 
the world he can be as successful running a company as he was at 
sequencing human DNA.

"We are on a crusade as much as it is an economic goal," Venter said. 
"This is one of those crusades that only works if it becomes really 
profitable."

Five years after antagonizing government scientists while racing them to 
map the human genome, Venter is back, making the typically bold 
statements that have long polarized opinion about him. Either he is one 
of this era's most electrifying scientists, or he's one of the most 
maddening. He is apt in conversation to compare himself to Robin Hood. 
Or Darwin.

"Yes, Craig confronts," said Alfonso Romo Garza, a Mexican billionaire, 
controller of a decent chunk of the world's commercial vegetable seeds 
and a backer of Venter's latest undertaking. "Of course, he's 
antagonistic. He's controversial. But I love controversial people 
because those are the people who change the world."

Bearded from a three-year, Darwinesque yacht trip around the world, 
Venter also now sports an extensive collection of genetic material 
scooped from the sea on his journey -- and that's the raw material for 
his alternative fuel project. With $15 million from Garza, he has 
launched a new company in Rockville called Synthetic Genomics Inc.

It is a small firm with classic Venter ambition. Create life. Use it to 
make fuel.

There are caveats, to be sure.

Venter's business career made him rich, but his record running Celera 
Genomics Corp. was spotty. The company's original business plan -- 
selling access to the genetic data Venter helped develop -- faltered 
because the information became public through the government's efforts.

Celera has since waxed and waned with other business plans that haven't 
yet worked out.

He insists this time that things have changed.

"I started Celera because I wanted to map the human genome," he said. 
"It's different now. We actually do have a great idea for a business."

There are a number of other companies that say they are ahead of Venter 
in the quest to use biotechnology to make energy, and they contend that 
they have more near-term and less complicated methods. Vinod Khosla, 
co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc. and a prominent Silicon Valley 
venture capitalist who has turned his investment focus to new energy, 
said of Venter's new company, "There are too many technical risks 
cascading together."

But Venter loves the challenge. The formation of the new company 
solidifies ideas he has been investigating for several years through his 
various research foundations in Rockville. The Venter Institute and the 
Institute for Genomic Research have received several Energy Department 
grants to explore using genomics -- the study of genetic material in the 
chromosomes of organisms -- for energy purposes. Venter launched the new 
business with his longtime collaborator, Hamilton O. Smith, who won a 
Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine and is a noted expert in DNA 
manipulation techniques.

Perhaps Venter's biggest personnel coup to date was the hiring earlier 
this month of Aristides Patrinos, who directed the Energy Department's 
biological and environmental research and launched its efforts to solve 
energy and environmental problems using microbes. Patrinos is an 
influential proponent of new energy technologies and a force behind 
President Bush's recent focus on innovative fuel production in the State 
of the Union address. Patrinos, whom Venter describes as his last friend 
in government, led the federally funded Human Genome Project, which 
raced Venter to decode human DNA.

"I think it's a very significant message to the world that Ari has 
agreed to take on this challenge to build this enterprise," Venter said.

So far, the company has raised about $30 million, according to 
Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Venter has generally avoided 
taking venture capital money in order to maintain tight control, 
something he didn't have at Celera, where he was ultimately fired.

At this point, Synthetic Genomics is a virtual company, housed at the 
sprawling Rockville headquarters that is home to Venter's institutes. 
The company is mostly using Venter's existing research staff. Venter 
said there could be a significant ramp-up soon, including separate 
office space nearby, if development talks with major energy firms are 
successful. Venter said he is in discussions with several companies.

Venter is convinced that "genomics is going to do for the energy and 
chemical field what it did in the early 1990s for medical biotechnology."

In the case of energy, the problems are well known. Oil prices have 
skyrocketed. There are national security concerns over relying so 
heavily on foreign oil sources. Energy companies are pursuing any number 
of alternatives, including increasing production of ethanol.

The problem with current production methods is that they rely on using 
corn kernels, which are converted into sugar, fermented to produce 
alcohol and then distilled into ethanol. Meeting the country's energy 
needs using that method could eventually strain the food supply, 
particularly for animals that feed off corn.

Ethanol can be produced other ways, though it is more difficult. One way 
is to use plant matter such as switch grass, cornstalks or corn husks 
and break it down into cellulose using a combination of enzymes. Until 
energy prices skyrocketed, that option was far more expensive than using 
oil, and the cost of building a plant was prohibitive. More modern 
technology is bringing the cost down, and biotech companies are lining 
up to advance the technology even further. There are no commercial-scale 
facilities online yet, though one in Spain could open this fall.

Patrinos thinks Synthetic Genomics can reduce costs even further by 
using either a soup of microbes or genetically designed ones to perform, 
in essentially one place, all of the biological functions needed to 
break down the plant material and turn it into ethanol.

"Anytime you add steps, you add costs," Patrinos said. "The ideal 
situation would essentially just be one big vat, where in one place you 
just stick the raw material -- it could be switch grass -- and out the 
other end comes fuel that you could drive it on to the gas station."

This will not happen tomorrow. Venter's scientists will need at least 
several years to sift through the millions of organisms he collected on 
his around-the-world yacht trip, which ended last month. The hope is 
that something in that menagerie will provide the key to more efficient 
energy.

As evidence of what he thinks he can deliver, Venter pointed to DuPont 
Co.'s efforts to use organisms in somewhat similar ways. Scientists at 
the chemical company, in a project dating to 1995, have genetically 
modified E. coli germs in such a way that they turn corn into 
propanediol, a compound typically made from petrochemicals that can be 
used to toughen fabrics such as polyester. DuPont will open a $100 
million plant to make the material later this year.

It is also working on many other projects, from energy to hair care and 
skin care. "Imagine dipping your entire hand into a jar of color that 
only sticks to the nail surface, not the skin, not the nail bed," a 
company official said.

Biotech changed the way drugs are developed. For Venter and others, 
there is more work to be done.

"Sometimes you get a new idea that is better than the old idea," he 
said. "It wouldn't be the first time I've done that."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/26/AR2006022600932.html?nav=hcmodule
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