DOE Awards SBIR to Zymetis
Zymetis announced today that it has received its first Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the Department of Energy. The $100,000 award will fund Zymetis work on Optimal Substrate-Specific Hemicellulase Enzyme Mixtures.
One advantage of Zymetis technology is that its enzyme mixtures are derived from a single organism. The organism has an arsenal of almost 90 different plant digesting enzymes capable of reducing practically any plant-based biomass into its constituent sugars. Because they are produced by one organism, each enzyme works perfectly together to acheive more complex digestions. Harnessing how the company’s organism tailors enzyme mixtures to a particular substrate such as corn cob or timber fiber is critical to commercializing Zymetis’ core technologies.
“We’re pleased to see the DOE understands that our technologies can provide the critical break through necessary to make several bio-mass conversion projects in the United States economically viable,” said Scott Laughlin, CEO of Zymetis. “NREL explained three years ago the fundamental gap in existing technologies: nothing has emerged to allow next generation biofuels companies to reduce the cost and severity of feedstock pretreatment and reduce the amount of exogenous enzyme that must be applied to release sugars for fermentation at the same time. Our technology fills this gap. The challenge now is to make it easier to integrate this technology into existing systems.”
Work on Phase I will be completed on May 11, 2010, opening up the opportunity for Phase II funding of up to an additional $800,000.
