Engineered Yeast Produces Ethanol and Butanol from C5 and C6 Sugars from Biomass Feedstocks

FavStocks.com
By Green Car Congress on 03/29/2010 – 2:21 am

Researchers from Frankfurt University have engineered the common industrial yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to ferment pentose (C5) as well as hexose (C6) sugars derived from biomass feedstock to produce bioethanol and biobutanol.

A talk on the work—“Genetic engineering of industrial yeast strains for the production of bioethanol and biobutanol from C5 and C6 sugars,”—by Dr. Christian Weber, Prof. Eckhard Boles and Dr. Gunter Festel took place on Monday at the Society for General Microbiology’s spring meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Plant waste is available in large amounts and contains a mixture of complex sugars including hexoses and pentoses that can be fermented to alcohol.

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