In an appearance on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” JBEI CEO Jay Keasling explained how he and his JBEI colleague
are engineering bacteria to produce fuel from sugar. Deflecting host Stephen Colbert’s suggestion that he is a mad scientist, Keasling says “the same yeast that we use to produce beer and bread” will soon be fueling our cars and planes. He also talks about the low-cost anti-malarial drug his lab has already produced using the same process.