How AI Makes Biotech Greener, Faster and Cheaper
Unlike chemical synthesis of vanillin, bioconversion is mild.

• It uses natural feedstock and processes
• Requires less energy
• Avoids hazardous chemical and petrochemical inputs
• And does not produce toxic waste

To produce sustainable natural vanillin, we use ferulic acid, derived from rice husks, and ferment it with AI-optimized enzymes.

An agricultural and renewable waste product is transformed into a valuable commodity, contributing to a circular economy.
So What's Wrong With Conventional Biotech Techniques?
The biggest issue in producing vanillin ex-ferulic acid is time.

Conventional synthetic biology techniques takes years.

To find the right enzymes.

To bioengineer them to improve their performance and increase yields.

And to stabilize the results to make them repeatable and mass-producible.

Time, as we know, is money.
Conventional Biotech
Low vanillin yield - Current yields are much lower than what is required for large-scale production.

Competition from other pathways - Considerable metabolic engineering is required to direct cellular resources exclusively towards vanillin production by blocking competing pathways.

Instability of vanillin - Inside the microorganisms' living cells, vanillin can be unstable and readily convert into other compounds instead of accumulating. Developing organisms that prevent this is crucial to stabilizing vanillin production.

Toxicity issues - At higher concentrations, vanillin is toxic to the organisms that produce it. This counter-productive trait puts an upper limit on achievable yields and requires techniques to address toxicity constraints.

Regulation of multiple genes - Vanillin biosynthesis requires coordination of multiple enzyme-coding genes. Fine-tuning genetic circuits to adequately regulate such multistep pathways is technically difficult.
It takes 5-6 years from R&D to production!
Zelixir AI x Biotech
• We completed R&D 12x faster than usual.
• We completed the pilot trial in four months instead of two years.
• Our second trial took half the time it normally takes.
• Overall, AI shortened the entire process by 2/3.

The bottom line

What’s more sustainable than the energy, resources, time and money that were never used?

Learn about Our Process