New Synthetic Biology Technique Boosts Microbial Production of Diesel Fuel

Berekely Lab
March 26, 2012

Joint BioEnergy Institute Researchers Develop Dynamic System for Regulating Metabolic Pathways

Significant boosts in the microbial production of clean, green and renewable biodiesel fuel has been achieved with the development of a new technique in synthetic biology by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). This new technique – dubbed a dynamic sensor-regulator system (DSRS) – can detect metabolic changes in microbes during the production of fatty acid-based fuels or chemicals and control the expression of genes affecting that production. The result in one demonstration was a threefold increase in the microbial production of biodiesel from glucose.

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