What’s unique about this technology is that the feedstock is flexible
The chlorella microalgae strain used to make the AlgaVia flours and proteins is not genetically engineered. However, for customers concerned about genetically engineered corn ingredients in the fermentation process, Solazyme can switch feed stocks to non-GM sugar cane or other materials, says Rakitsky.
“What’s unique about this technology is that the feedstock is flexible, so we can use corn syrup, sugar cane, sugar beet, cassava root, or even digested cellulose.”
As for the high oleic oil and structured fats (‘algal butter’) next in the commercialization pipeline, these cannot be efficiently produced in native algae strains, so Solazyme uses genetic engineering techniques (eg. introducing genes from safflower, or inhibiting the production of certain enzymes in order to get more of the oil components it wants and fewer of those it doesn’t) in order to make precisely tailored oils with unique functionality.