Visolis uses synthetic biology and fermentation and catalysis to produce a variety of things at 20-50% lower cost, but how? Deepak Dugar, President and Founder of Visolis shared this illuminating presentation how their platform molecules and applications using raw materials like sugars, syngas and biomass can meet a need in billion-dollar markets like green solvents, adhesives, polyols, terpenes, and more.

For centuries, humans rummaged around. We built homes with gathered wood. We stretched animal skins. The Earth provided ready-made building blocks — for front doors, and for shoes — and our material needs were met.

“Then petroleum came along,” says Deepak Dugar, “and we got other building blocks.”

Petroleum gave us ethylene. When strung together by a catalyst, ethylene becomes polyethylene, which is the most abundant plastic in the world. Enter plastic bags, folding chairs, and squeeze bottles.

Synthetic biology is the future of a range of industries, from biopharma to agriculture. Learn about some of the companies using synthetic biology to build more sustainable processes for making medicines, clothing, cosmetics, and food. Image by rawpixel.com

The device on which you’re reading this article includes plastics built from petroleum-based feedstocks. The same is probably true of much of the clothing you’re wearing. And perhaps the soaps or cosmetics you used this morning. We are surrounded by products made by petroleum-derived materials, and demand for these products stokes demand for oil extraction. In 2015, when Deepak Dugar entered Cyclotron Road as part of Cohort One, his aim was to disrupt that cycle by commercializing advances he had made at the intersection of synthetic biology and catalysis — research he had bootstrapped, toiling nights and weekends in a rented Boston lab, while working as a consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers.