US chemicals firm Invista and Portugal-based computational biology company SilicoLife are collaborating to develop new technologies to enable bio-derived processes for the production of industrial chemicals like butadiene.

The two companies are collaborating in order to further co-develop their technology platforms. The agreement will leverage Invista’s capabilities in biotechnology and catalysis, and knowledge of the chemicals industry, and SilicoLife’s in silico (performed on computer or via computer simulation) metabolic engineering and rational synthetic biology capabilities for the development of new biobased routes to industrial chemicals. SilicoLife offers metabolic engineering solutions, builds computational models of microbial cells and develops proprietary algorithms to find the most efficient pathways between the raw material and the end-product.

“Invista is constantly seeking innovative approaches to advance its position in biotechnology,” said Warren Primeaux, President of Invista Intermediates. “We anticipate this collaboration with SilicoLife will help us accelerate our timeline to develop new bio-derived processes for a range of industrial chemicals—helping us further improve our cost and sustainability position in this area.”

According to Simão Soares, CEO of SilicoLife, “The collaboration with Invista combines our state-of-the art engineering expertise with Invista’s world-class research team to accelerate the design of optimized microbial strains for the cost-effective production of industrial chemicals from renewable feedstocks.”