fastcompany.com: By Elizabeth Svoboda

The oil well of tomorrow may be in a California lab full of genetically modified, diesel-spewing bacteria.

LS9’s world headquarters looks like a dorm room on move-out day. The reception area at the biotech company’s San Carlos, California, digs is stark white, unashamedly bare. No one has bothered to spring for prints or posters for the walls, not even from Ikea. Haphazard stacks of boxes line every corridor. It’s no surprise LS9 doesn’t put much of a premium on appearances–after all, its most important employees are patented microbes too small to be seen. “This is where we grow the bacteria,” says Steve del Cardayré, the company’s vice president for research and development, leading me to a lab space no bigger than your typical college double. He points to a vat containing an oatmeal-like slurry–carbohydrates derived from plant matter that feed the microbes. “After they’re finished growing, all we have to do is take the mixture out and spin it, and density makes it separate into its components.” [ read more ]