Algae have great potential in the quest for biofuel, but the basic research needed to support the farming of algae is starving. Recently several start-up companies have failed, and energy research in this area is not funded at a level that will support the development of basic research and applied research.

Wired magazine has a piece that reports the latest gloomy developments (Wired Magazine December 2009-How Algal Biofuels Lost a Decade in the Race to Replace Oil* By Alexis Madrigal ), pointing out that venture capitalists are pulling back from funding development efforts as the prospect of profits recede toward the horizon. Alexis also reports that collections of algae that were studied are now lost since the money to renew the cultures collected has vanished. This is a tragic loss since without the culture lines that were studied, much of the research knowledge was lost with them.

This is a classic example of where government funded research into the basic science can be effective, as a base level of knowledge and a community of scientists and technologists are necessary before a new industry can develop. It also highlights that without a congressional sponsor or "angel" who keeps the research funding going in the U.S. budget, science suffers.

The model to date is that small start up companies are formed to develop commercial technology, but this model usually results in the scientific knowledge being viewed as "intellectual property" that is proprietary.

When government research done through Universities and the energy research national laboratories produces a corpus of knowledge that is part of the public commons, this process can seed a real diffusion of the knowledge necessary to make a viable industry. Unfortunately the greed apparent in the current model is antithetical to the development of a critical mass of basic scientific knowledge that would enable such a transition from lab to farm.

While large energy companies have announced large programs to make biofuels, many sound more like PR campaigns than viable commitments to do the research needed to understand culture, genetics, and extraction of useful products from algae grown as an agricultural crop.

We need to better understand how communities of algae can be kept going for long periods of time, and to conserve the many species of algae that are endangered as global warming dries up the pond scum that nurtures these beings. Indeed there may be species living in some puddle that can produce pharmaceuticals, feed-stocks, biofuels, and sequester Co2 efficiently from the coal that we continue to burn in excess. We should make the basic science available to the public, and encourage the private firms that are experimenting with the technologies to publish more of their research.

When one of the start-up firms goes belly up, perhaps the government could purchase the research and make it available to the research community. It is important to learn from the failures as much as to publicize the successes. When we loose the story of the failures, so often the history is just going to be repeated elsewhere. Since failure of a start up may be a convolution of management failures along with scientific and technological failures, the gleaning of this knowledge is a research topic that demands a multidisciplinary case study if we are to learn useful lessons from the failures. Such research is properly conducted by University teams, and funded by government or foundations.

I hope that Stephan Chu as Energy Secretary will have the vision to fund the basic science needed to understand this ancient plant family better. While I can't predict where the research will lead, I know that growing a crop of new scientists and technicians who will build the intellectual commons where algae knowledge is a public resource is a good investment for our future.

Bruce Bagnoli