Codexis controls most of the important patents for what is known as molecular evolution.
The result, according to Codexis's boss, Alan Shaw, is enzymes that can perform chemical transformations unknown in nature.
Exactly which molecules Codexis is most interested in these days, Dr Shaw is not yet willing to say.
Like two other, nearby firms, he is now focusing Codexis's attention on molecules even more chemically similar to petrol.
Shell is also an investor in Codexis, a company that produces enzymes designed to make biofuel processing more efficient.
The Codexis-Cosan-Shell partnership and the Amyris-Santelisa-Total one are the furthest along of the drop-in fuel businesses, but others are coming up on the rails.
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The idea of engineering enzymes to make octanol was what first brought Codexis, a small biotechnology firm based in Redwood City, California, into the field.
Research into clean and alternative energy is exploding, with everyone from giants like ExxonMobil and BP to upstarts like Amyris and Codexis getting into the market.
Unlike Codexis, which deals in purified enzymes, Amyris employs a technique called synthetic biology, which turns living organisms into chemical reactors by assembling novel biochemical pathways within them.
Codexis's technology works with pharmaceutical precision indeed, one of its main commercial products is the enzyme system for making the chemical precursor to Lipitor, a cholesterol-lowering drug that is marketed by Pfizer.
Chevron was an early investor in Codexis.
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The twist that Codexis brings is that unlike petrol, of which each batch from the refinery is chemically different from the others (because the crude oil from which it is derived is an arbitrary mixture of hydrocarbon molecules), biopetrol could be turned out exactly the same, again and again, and thus designed to have the optimal mixture of properties required of a motor fuel.
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