Tech Company Unique to Gainesville/Alachua County

Sometimes Evolution Happens Overnight

By Donna Foster, GTEC Communications Manager

Sometimes evolution happens overnight. 

Unlike most larger organisms, bacteria reproduce rapidly.  They simply split in two every few minutes or hours, and both offspring then also continue to divide and multiply.  Such a short spacing between generations makes the natural evolutionary process much faster, and these organisms have an enormous potential to acquire extremely advantageous adaptations very quickly. 

Unique to Gainesville/Alachua County, GTEC resident startup Evolugate, LLC uses their advanced technology to improve upon this very process of natural selection.

“The GTEC program has helped us make tremendous strides in the past two years,” said Eudes de Crécy, Evolugate’s CEO and the inventor of the Evolugator.  “We offer an unparalleled ability to leverage the powers of evolution and natural selection through the exclusive proprietary use of the Evolugator.”

Evolugate uses its proprietary machine, dubbed Evolugator, to continuously evolve a given strain of bacteria or other microorganism.  Using its machine, Evolugate enables the natural evolution process and allows the selection of microorganisms that have acquired specific desired qualities.

“We evolve harmless bacteria for extremely beneficial applications such as soil contamination remediation, food products, fermentation, pharmaceuticals, energy and biotechnology products,” said Mr. de Crécy.

For example, Escherichia coli, a bacteria often associated with food-borne infections, plays an important role in modern biological engineering.  Researchers now use a non-pathogen E. coli as a sort of factory.  Among other possible applications, E. coli can be used to produce large amounts of insulin to help diabetes patients to have longer, healthier lives, and they can produce ethanol from renewable energy sources to be used as a safe, environmentally friendly biofuel.  Evolugate is currently using its GTEC lab to improve valuable, practical processes just like these.

“The Evolugator’s microbes outperform their original counterparts,” said Mr. de Crécy.  “The technology enhances and optimizes the innate evolutionary and natural selection processes of both natural and already engineered microbes, which results in unique, patentable microorganisms that are useful for industrial and academic purposes.”

The market for the accelerated evolution of bacteria and the selection of improved industrial and higher performing microbes is enormous.  Evolugate’s technology promises to greatly increase the possibilities and improve the efficiencies of microbes opening the future for many exciting new products such as biofuels and environmental remediation processes.

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