Eyeing Oil, Synthetic Biologists Mine Microbes For Black Gold

摘要

What do you do after creating a cheap antimalarial drug that could save millions of lives in the developing world? If you're Jay Keasling, you tackle two equally pressing problems: climate change and the need for abundant renewable fuels. Keasling, a synthetic biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, made a splash a few years ago when he and his colleagues reengineered two microbes-Escherichia coli and baker's yeast-to churn out a costly plant-derived antimalarial compound called artemisinin.