The financing was led by Pangaea Ventures Ltd., and included current Calysta officers and directors. Purnesh Seegopaul, Ph.D., General Partner at Pangaea, will join the Calysta Board of Directors.

Calysta is focusing on development of methane as a new biological feedstock for cost-competitive, scalable biofuels and chemicals production. Methane is widely available from large domestic deposits of shale gas, as well as landfills and other sources. Calysta’s BioGTL and BioGTC natural gas conversion technologies use proprietary organisms to economically convert methane into liquid hydrocarbons, the building blocks of higher-value, easily transportable fuels and chemicals.

Calysta says that in contrast to current algae- and sugar-based methods, a methane-based biofuel platform is expected to produce fuel at less than half the cost of other biological methods, allowing direct competition with petroleum-based fuels.