Superfuels from superbugs

There are a lot of small startup companies competing with the petrochemical giants in the race to develop renewable, clean and carbon-friendly alternatives to fossil fuels. And these new enterprises pack a weighty punch; they sport some of the world's leading researchers on their boards, and they are ambitious: quite simply, they want to replace today's 'big oil' with biofuels made by microbes like algae and bacteria.