Amyris uses engineered microbes and rapid enzymatic pathway construction techniques to build microorganisms capable of producing high-value compounds, from renewable biofuels to pharmaceuticals.

Amyris' platform technology is based on a modular design of metabolic pathways. One example of this approach was developed at the University of California, Berkeley, in the laboratory of Professor Jay Keasling and published in July 2003 in Nature Biotechnology.