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Jay Keasling pitches synthetic fuel on 'Colbert Report'

11 March 2009

In an appearance March 10 on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," Berkeley chemical engineering professor Jay Keasling explains how he and his colleagues at the Joint BioEnergy Institute 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.