Microbial Environments
Polymers are found in nature in a wide range of organisms, such as microbes, plants, and animals. Polyhydroxyalkanoates, or PHAs, also naturally occur within certain organisms, including microbes. These microbes use PHA to store energy, consuming it for food when needed. It is this characteristic that gives Mirel its
biodegradability in natural soil and water environments, home composting systems, and industrial composting facilities, the latter of which may not be available in your area. Mirel is not designed to effectively degrade in landfills.
Though PHA polymers are found in nature, their production in wild-type bacterial strains is inefficient and costly for commercial purposes. In 1981, Imperial Chemical Industries, or ICI, developed a controlled fermentation process using a wild-type bacterial strain to produce a PHA copolymer that was introduced under the trade name Biopol. While a handful of applications were developed for Biopol, the cost to produce the polymer using the naturally occurring bacterial strains that were available at the time was prohibitively high, and its performance properties were limited. Commercialization was not possible, but the Biopol assets remained largely intact and were eventually sold to Monsanto, Inc.
By the late 1980s, tools for genetic engineering had advanced significantly, and microbes were already being genetically designed to produce various products, such as protein drugs. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Oliver Peoples, Chief Scientific Officer of Metabolix, was working in the lab of Dr. Anthony Sinskey, a member of the Metabolix Board of Directors. They identified the key genes required for the biosynthesis of Mirel, and invented and patented the first transgenic systems for their production.
The use of genetically engineered production organisms, instead of wild-type strains, broadly expanded the number of compositions that could be made, enabling the tight level of control and high efficiency and productivity that are required for cost-effective industrial manufacturing. Metabolix was formed in 1992 to exploit these discoveries. In order to fully capture the opportunity, the acquisition of Monsanto’s patent estate related to biobased plastics, which included the Biopol assets, was made in 2001. Metabolix has since fully developed an integrated manufacturing process using transgenic strains for fermentation and a proprietary recovery process. This integrated manufacturing process is being incorporated into the new
commercial manufacturing facility in Clinton, Iowa.