INTEGRATED CORE CAPABILITIES
Algenol has over 150 talented people working together covering the following disciplines.
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
Algenol’s Molecular Biology team maximizes the performance of enhanced algae for ethanol production at the commercial scale. The team carries out strain characterization, plasmid construction, transformation, pathway engineering and optimization. The team has talented, experienced scientists with expertise in diverse areas of molecular biology, biochemistry, microbial physiology, metabolic engineering and systems biology. In addition, Algenol has world class scientific advisors.
ENGINEERING
The Algenol Engineering team generates the scientific and engineering knowledge necessary for photobioreactor design, techno-economic modeling, product separation, process engineering, life cycle analysis and carbon capture and utilization for the deployment of our Integrated Biorefinery and the commercialization of the DIRECT TO ETHANOL® process.
AQUACULTURE
Algenol’s Aquaculture group understands the biological, physical and population interactions of cyanobacteria cultivated in our proprietary photobioreactors under lab, greenhouse and outdoor field conditions. The group conducts its work in development reactors to obtain information and data for optimizing photobioreactor design and ethanol production.
PHYSIOLOGY AND PHOTOBIOLOGY
Algenol’s Algal Physiology and Photobiology group examines the physiological response of cyanobacteria to environmental stresses and optimizes photosynthetic and ethanologenic production in the laboratory and commercial environments. The group’s activities include algal culture genetics, biochemistry, photobioreactor development and operation, physiological assessment of photosynthesis and oxygen/ethanol production and nutrient management.
CULTURE COLLECTION
Algenol’s Culture Collection team maintains over 2,300 algal strains from a wide variety of habitats and with diverse physiological capabilities, both as living cultures and as archived cryogenic stocks. New algal strains of interest are isolated and characterized from environmental samples and added to the collection. The team monitors the quality cultures and provides algal strains to other Algenol departments for various research and development projects.
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
Algenol’s Analytical Chemistry team supports the research and development efforts of our entire organization. This group measures small molecules and macromolecules integral to the molecular pathways that are necessary to produce ethanol and other green chemicals in cyanobacteria. Information derived from metabolomic and proteomic research is critical to understanding and improving production yields of the algal host. Emphasis is placed on establishing analyses based on chromatography, electrophoresis, spectroscopy and mass spectrometry to yield highly accurate, precise and specific data.
BIOINFORMATICS
The Bioinformatics group provides upstream support for organism engineering through cutting-edge “multi-omics” technologies and comparative bioinformatics. The group is responsible for developing algorithms, methodologies and pipelines to automate the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data, and to maintain an in-house informatics system to help collect, parse and integrate diverse types of research.
PLANT OPERATIONS
The Plant Operations group ensures the timely construction and maintenance of critical facilities and equipment at our Fort Myers laboratories and Integrated Biorefinery (IBR). The team works closely with our technologists to fabricate and install photobioreactors, and to operate and maintain our world-class research and development facilities and the IBR.
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Our Business Development group develops and manages relationships with project partners. The team works with our licensees and other prospective operators of DIRECT TO ETHANOL® plants as well as key supply-chain partners.