Amyris Biotechnologies: Pioneering the Synthetic Biology Industry
Company founded: 2003
Founders: UC Berkeley Professor Jay Keasling, Jack Newman (UC Berkeley, Bachelor of Arts, 1992, molecular and cellular biology, UC Berkeley postdoc), Neil Renninger (UC Berkeley Ph.D., 2001, chemical engineering), Kinkead Reiling (UC Berkeley postdoc), Vincent Martin (UC Berkeley postdoc)
Synthetic biology is the use of genetic engineering and other molecular biology breakthroughs to create microbial chemical factories that produce products that can have novel capabilities, low costs, and reduced environmental impact.1 The field has huge potential to improve the world.
In the early 2000s, Jay Keasling, a UC Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, was a leading researcher in the emerging field of synthetic biology. Keasling’s UC Berkeley lab had developed one of the field’s first triumphs: engineering yeast to produce organic compounds called isoprenoids. Isoprenoids have many uses, including in flavorings, fragrances, and solvents. But Keasling wanted to focus the technology on much-needed pharmaceuticals, especially for the developing world. That led Keasling and his lab team to synthesize artemisinin, a compound that is the most effective cure for malaria. At that time malaria was killing millions of people, primarily children in Africa and Asia. Back then, the cost of artemisinin therapy was beyond the reach of millions of people. But UC Berkeley’s synthetic artemisinin could change that by reducing the cost of the drug tenfold.
Keasling and Carol Mimura in UC Berkeley’s Office of Technology Licensing considered licensing the artemisinin synthesis patent rights to a big pharmaceutical company, but as Keasling stated, “those companies weren’t the best licensees because they lacked the yeast engineering knowledge and the sustained business focus. Instead, a startup whose existence depended on the successful scale-up of artemisinin would be the ideal licensee.” So in 2003, Keasling along with four members of his lab—Jack Newman, Neil Renninger, Kinkead Reiling, and Vincent Martin—cofounded Amyris Biotechnologies.
The social impact of making a malaria cure widely accessible attracted the attention of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2004 the foundation awarded a $43 million grant to a partnership between Amyris, Keasling’s UC Berkeley lab, and OneWorld Health—the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the United States. Under the unique public-private institution partnership, the UC Berkeley lab perfected the microbial factory for producing artemisinin, Amyris adapted the yeast for industrial production and engineered the fermentation process for industrial scale-up, and OneWorld Health developed the drug regime and led its regulatory approval.
In a 2024 interview, Keasling applauded UC Berkeley “for having the flexibility and skills to negotiate an award-winning complex royalty-free patent license agreement with the Gates Foundation. The partnership was a model for attacking neglected diseases in the developing world.”2 Keasling added, “That project was a dream come true: interesting science, high technology, rapid transition from the lab bench to the bedside, and most importantly, meeting a critical need.”
With its Gates Foundation grant and antimalarial partnership, Amyris’s prominence in the exciting field of synthetic biology skyrocketed. That attracted the attention of leading venture capital firms. In 2005, Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures led Amyris’s $20 million Series A funding. That was an exciting time for the company. “Amyris attracted amazing people who were dedicated to the company’s mission,” Keasling said. “The spirit in the company was incredible.”
Amyris’s antimalarial mission was indeed admirable, but the company hadn’t identified a large commercial opportunity for its technology until 2006. At that time the price of oil rose sharply, surpassing $100 per barrel for the first time since the early 1980s. The price rise was caused in part by disruptions in the supply of oil. That raised interest in alternatives to petroleum-based fuels, especially alternatives with less environmental impact. Amyris’s technology could be used to produce farnesene, a renewable hydrocarbon that could be used to make biodiesel fuel. The company could make it possible for producers to blend renewable hydrocarbons produced from sustainable biomass and organic waste into fuel. Renewable diesel based on Amyris technology could deliver energy density, engine performance, and storage properties comparable to the best petroleum-based diesel as well as improved lubricity and superior cold-weather performance.
That biofuel potential propelled Amyris through a series of funding rounds that culminated in 2010 with the company’s initial public offering that raised $85 million and valued Amyris at nearly $700 million.
As of 2025, Keasling had cofounded two additional companies, LS9 and Lygos, and he’s proud of his students who have gone on to found over a dozen companies (as well as establish careers in academia and industry). Of Keasling’s three Amyris cofounders, Renninger went on to found Ripple Foods and Ample Carbon, Kinkead founded Bonneville Labs, and Newman continued fighting malaria by founding Zagaya. In reflecting on his legacy of students, innovations, and startups, Keasling remarked, “Berkeley is a special place.”
1 The source for much of the content in this section is Robert Sanders, “$43 Million Grant from Gates Foundation Brings Together Unique Collaboration for Antimarial Drug,” UC Berkeley News, December 13, 2004, https://newsarchive.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/12/13_gates.shtml
2 UC Berkeley’s intellectual property licensing office won the US Patent Office’s inaugural Patents for Humanity Award for architecting a path to create low-cost malaria treatments for the world’s poor.
Published in Startup Campus: How UC Berkeley Became an Unexpected Leader in Entrepreneurship and Startups, August 2025
