Houston Business Journal – by Greg Barr Reporter

A fledgling Houston company is exploring the use of hungry microscopic critters that can convert biofuels waste into high-value chemical compounds.

Glycos Biotechnologies Inc., co-founded by a Rice University professor, has licensed technologies based on his research and expects to open a demonstration facility in Houston by mid-2009.

In a report published in June in the journal Metabolic Engineering, the Rice scientists uncovered new wrinkles to a fermentation process discovered in 2007 that allows bacteria to convert glycerin