THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Which is just another way of saying genetic modification, in this case with artificially designed and created DNA for bacteria and algae. The products that result are desirable but no one knows yet about the process.

An ingredient crucial to malaria drugs, artemisinin, is already being produced from a yeast altered through synthetic biology. Specific brands have not been disclosed.

Solazyme points to substances like rennet, a key processing aid in cheese-making that requires an enzyme called chymosin to promote clotting. Traditionally, calves’ stomachs were used to provide that enzyme to curdle milk for cheese. But since the late 1990s, rennet has been generated by a microbe whose genetic code was altered with the insertion of a single bovine gene, and that process is the one most widely in use now in the United States.

The processes using synthetic biology involve techniques that more extensively alter genetic code. Those include “artificial gene synthesis,” in which DNA is created on computers and inserted into organisms, and other methods for changing DNA sequences and genes within organisms to alter their function.

Such techniques are used to coax bacteria, fungi and other organisms into producing substances they do not naturally produce. The algae now churning out the oil Ecover is using in its laundry detergent, for instance, would not generate such oil without genetic tinkering.

“It is not possible to harvest algae in the sea and get this oil,” Mr. Domen said.
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According to the ETC Group, a Canadian organization that tracks emerging technologies, Ecover is so far the only company that has publicly confirmed the use of synthetic biology to create an ingredient found in a specific product, its Ecover Natural Laundry Liquid.

Ecover buys the ingredient, algal oil from Solazyme, which used to describe itself as a synthetic biology company but has taken the term off its website.

“We use both natural strains, classic breeding, and strain selection, along with the tools of modern biotechnology, to produce a wide variety of oils and ingredients,” Genet Garamendi, a spokeswoman for Solazyme, wrote in an email.

Solazyme describes the organism that produces the oil as “an optimized strain” of single-cell algae “that have been in existence longer than we have.”

The company already sells its own line of cosmetics made from a different algal oil, Algenist, that are carried in stores like Sephora and Nordstrom.

Solazyme pointed to the environmental benefits of its processes and noted that the World Wildlife Fund, Rainforest Alliance and other environmental groups support its work. “We use molecular biology and standard industrial fermentation to produce renewable, sustainable algal oils that help alleviate pressures on the fragile ecosystems around the Equator that are frequently subject to deforestation and habitat destruction,” Jill Kauffman Johnson, the company’s director of sustainability, wrote in an email answering questions posed to Ms. Garamendi.

Other environmental and consumer groups, however, want Ecover to note the use of synthetic biology in the new oil it is using so that consumers know what they are buying.

Under what guidelines are genes created and/or modified and how thoroughly is the testing to prevent adverse results escaping the lab? So far we just have to take their word for it.