Jay Keasling watches as 700 billion Escherichia coli swish around inside a benchtop bioreactor in the brand-spanking new fermentation room of the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, Calif. Seven copper pipes line the wall with a ready supply of nitrogen, oxygen, water, and other essentials, while an automated controller-looking like a souped-up frozen yogurt machine-regulates the temperature, pH, and oxygenation of the cloudy solution brewing within this one liter tank. This isn't just any E. coli multiplying inside, Keasling says proudly, "This is a strain we engineered and now it's producing biodiesel."
If anyone can marshal in the new era of alternative energy, it may well be Keasling, a bioengineer at the University of California, Berkeley, and the CEO of JBEI, which is a US Department of Energy-sponsored partnership between three California universities and three national laboratories. In the last five years, Keasling has coaxed yeast to synthesize the antimalarial ...
