Inside Biofuels

Biofuel Breakthroughs Start at the Roots

GrassRoots Biotechnology is a young Durham company that wants to streamline the way grasses can become better biofuel ingredients.

GrassRoots’ core technology, dubbed the RootArray system, monitors how genes control plants’ growth from within tiny developing roots. Nudging that activity by flipping certain genetic “switches” can make plants better ingredients for distilling into ethanol — biofuel.

Major industrial partners are betting the fast-growing Duke University spin-out company can also make plants into better foods. 

Seeded: Biotech Center Loan Speeds Growth

The GrassRoots technology was spun out in 2007 from the lab of Philip Benfey, Ph.D., professor and chair of Duke’s biology department.

Like hundreds of North Carolina life science companies, it got start-up help, including a $25,000 loan, from the Biotechnology Center.

Other organizations, including government agencies, have also plowed money into GrassRoots — nearly $1.5 million so far, and the company’s really just getting started.

Now GrassRoots has 20 employees working from renovated tobacco warehouse space in labs and offices in downtown Durham.

One of the newest researchers at GrassRoots is plant-growth specialist Patrick Vincent-Pope, Ph.D., a French postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He recently joined GrassRoots through an Industrial Fellowship program sponsored by the Biotechnology Center.

Needed: Cheap, Clean, Low-Impact Fuels

Lots of entrepreneurs around the world are diving into biofuels research. But the pot of green and gold at the end of the road will go to those who come up with cheap, clean, low-impact results that can be used anywhere.

“We have a system that allows us to understand the gene network in a very detailed way,” explains Doug Eisner, GrassRoots co-founder and chief operating officer. “And we believe it’ll let us find gene promoters that haven’t been discovered yet, in a systematic, fast and streamlined way.”

Eisner says plants tweaked with the help of GrassRoots research are candidates for more than biofuels. For example, they could be made more nutritious.  Or better able to withstand drought, bugs or other environmental hassles.

Besides the help from the Biotechnology Center and the numerous government grants, GrassRoots has also drawn support from major agricultural companies interested in food crop development.

GrassRoots is a great example for North Carolinians to cite, when describing how the state is uniquely positioned to wade into the biofuels future. 

“Things are going pretty well,” Eisner tends to say with a modest wink. “We’re kind of excited.”