Gil Seton Jr. and how C16 Biosciences developed torula oil. July 15, 2026 Gil Seton Jr. is a Southern California real estate entrepreneur who also leads SP Investment Fund LLC, where he focuses on ventures in transformative areas of health science and technology. One of Gil Seton's invested companies is C16 Biosciences, which has developed a unique, lab-grown palm oil substitute known as torula oil. From the start, the MIT alumni behind C16 Biosciences had a vision of employing biology in solving climate challenges. The only issue was finding a viable concept, which required much trial and error. After each failure, rather than admit defeat, the team went back to the drawing board. Ultimately, one founder shared a story of traveling to Singapore, where fires from forests being burned to create palm plantations cast a haze over the entire island-state. Another founder shared a similar experience in Costa Rica, where they had seen once pristine tropical rainforest turned into monocultures of palm trees. From there, they decided their goal would be to create a sustainable palm oil alternative. With a background in synthetic biology, the team refined a process for propagating oil-producing yeast in large vats. The yeasts ferment sugars, much like the yeasts employed in brewing beer. This oil is harvested from vats and refined into a product that can be used as a palm oil substitute by the personal care industry. Today, C16 Biosciences offers a popular Palmless product for use in items such as soaps and cosmetics. It is also working to commercially develop food-grade torula oil. The stakes riding on the success of products such as Palmless are high. Research has indicated that nearly 1 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide may be connected to palm expansion in Southeast Asia. This does not even take into account the expansion of palm plantations across South America and Central Africa. Numerous species, including critically endangered orangutans, have lost habitat as a result. Broad industry use of palm oil also points to the strong commercial potential of torula as a substitute ingredient. Palm oil is found in around half of packaged goods on the shelves, from chocolate to skin cream. Its uses include boosting spreadability and as an emulsifier that binds two unlike substances, such as water and oil. In an interview with Offrange, C16 Biosciences' CEO Shara Ticku noted that a half dozen cosmetics brands with torula oil as a primary ingredient launched in 2025 alone. These include NIOD, a next-generation Estee Lauder-owned skin cleanser brand. According to Ticku, her company's eco-friendly ingredient offers another major advantage: precision fermentation that generates novel carotenoid profiles. These can be tailored to the specific end-use of the health and beauty project being paired with torula oil. While the cost is significantly higher than with strictly functional palm oil, the use of torula has emerged as a sought-after differentiator. In general, Torula oil works to smooth skin, while it richly moisturizes, combining a silicone-like texture with a light after-feel. Its unique carotenoids span torulene and carotene, as well as unique fungal sterols. Such antioxidants help replenish skin and enhance skin barrier function. Because of its bio-based manufacturing process, agricultural impurities associated with palm oil are never an issue.

C16 Biosciences launched its Palmless oil using similar technology in spring 2023.

Australian startup Nourish Ingredients has announced a collaboration with dairy giant Fonterra to accelerate the development of dairy products with fats produced via fermentation.Nourish, which is developing a range of high-impact, low-inclusion ‘animalic’ fats in fermentation tanks, will work with Fonterra on Creamilux, a lipid produced by a genetically engineered microbe that “recreates the rich, creamy mouthfeel, taste and emulsification properties of dairy fat.”As part of their collaboration, Fonterra and Nourish will explore the potential of Creamilux “as a key ingredient to unlock functionality while preserving the delicious taste of traditional dairy” across a range of categories including cheese, cream, and butter.The partners will also explore opportunities where Nourish Ingredients’ fats can enhance non-dairy categories such as bakery that traditionally rely on dairy fats, said Nourish CEO James Petrie, a crop metabolic engineer who worked as a research scientist at Australia’s national science agency CSIRO before co-founding Nourish​ ​with Ben Leita in early 2020.“This collaboration balances our passion for creating innovative ingredients with hard-nosed applications to unlock massive product opportunities. We are overcoming specific animal ingredient bottlenecks to optimize current animal-based food production capacity without losing quality.”Jeremy Hill, chief science and technology officer at Fonterra, added: “Dairy will always be at the core of our business… At the same time, ingredients produced through emerging technologies can work seamlessly in and alongside our dairy products, expanding the range of products and choices we can offer to customers and consumers.”Fats from fermentationNourish is one of a growing number of startups using microbial fermentation to make tailored fats including Yali Bio, Melt&Marble, ÄIO, c16 Bio, Circe, Seminal Bio, NoPalm Ingredients, Zero Acre Farms and Clean Food Group.Other startups are making cell-cultured fat by growing animal fat cells in a bioreactor (Hoxton Farms, Mission Barns​​, Believer Meats);​ while some are playing around with the structure of plant oils through emulsions (Lypid), oleogels (Shiru, Motif FoodWorks), and oil structuring technology (Fattastic).Speaking to AgFunderNews at the recent SynBioBeta conference in San Jose, Petrie said the economics of fats from fermentation stand up if you’re making high-impact, low-inclusion products: “There are some fats and oils in meat and dairy that are really signature that you associate with a well-cooked piece of meat or a dairy product. What we do at Nourish Ingredients is try and ignore all the boring fats which you could otherwise get from plants and focus on the really potent and important molecules we can deliver via fermentation.”Low inclusion ratesHe added: “We have our R&D in Australia and a pilot facility in Singapore that lets us do meaningful quantities for our partners to use in internal testing. For commercial scale production, we’ve already identified partners who can do that for us. But we don’t need huge bioreactors as our ingredients are used at a very low inclusion rate, so we’ve got relatively low-volume fermentation from co-manufacturers, and we then take that material and do some critical value-add steps.”To date, Nourish has raised about US$40 million, he said. “But it is very challenging in the current environment, especially in the alternative protein space, which is getting absolutely hammered