Lawrence Livermore discovery could improve biofuel production

Biomass Magazine


By Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | April 04, 2014


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Engineered bacteria can churn out rocket fuel

The Financial Express


PTI | Washington | Updated: Mar 28 2014, 16:01 IST


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RESISTANCE IS NOT FUTILE: JOINT BIOENERGY INSTITUTE RESEARCHERS ENGINEER RESISTANCE TO IONIC LIQUIDS IN BIOFUEL MICROBES

EIN news


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One-pot process to simplify production of biofuel from biomass

ecoseed.org

Aug. 16, 2013

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Researchers Identify Most Effective Microbial Enzymes in Biomass Deconstruction

azocleantech.com

Published on July 26, 2013 at 7:55 AM

 

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Turning Carbon Dioxide into Green Biofuel with Microbes

techfragments.com

by James Anderson on July 25, 2013

 

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BIO Announces Jay Keasling its 2013 George Washington Carver Award Winner

checkbiotech.org

Friday, May 17, 2013

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New Advance in Biofuel Production

Lab Manager

By Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | May 10 2013

 

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DOE funds Bioenergy Research Centers for additional 5 years

Ethanol Producer Magazine

By Erin Voegele | April 04, 2013

 

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Researchers Engineer Plant Cell Walls to Increase Yield of Fuel Sugars

AZOCleantech.com

Published on March 30, 2013 at 7:38 AM

 

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JBEI discovers enzyme to boost sugar in plant cell walls

Biofuels Digest
Isabel Lane
December 24, 2012   Read more

A better route to xylan

Science Codex


Posted On: November 12, 2012 - 7:30pm

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High School Students Get Jump Start on Science Careers with Special Summer Program

Lab Manager Magazine
By: Other Author - Published: July 19 2012

The iCLEM Program Gives Students Hands-On Science Experience and a Salary


When we think of high school summer jobs what typically comes to mind are images of lawn-mowing, camp-counseling, life-guarding at a swimming pool, and baby-sitting. But for eight high school students from the East Bay Area, a job this summer means a lab coat and safety glasses, working in a state-of-the art microbiology research facility on the next-step in bioenergy.

The program known as “iCLEM,” which stands for Introductory College Level Experience in Microbiology, is a unique paid summer internship for high school students who trend outside the typical curve of academic enrichment. Sponsored by the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC), with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), iCLEM pays the students a total of $2,000 upon completion of an eight-week program in which they do real science in collaboration with high school teachers and researchers from JBEI and SynBERC.

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Foxtail Millet Offers Clues for Assembling the Switchgrass Genome

Science Daily

ScienceDaily (May 14, 2012) — Arranging DNA fragments into a genome sequence that scientists can interpret is a challenge often compared to assembling a puzzle, except there is no box to provide an idea of what the picture is even supposed to be. Sometimes there's guidance in the form of other publicly-available DNA sequences from related organisms that can be used to guide the assembly process, but its usefulness depends on how closely related any two sequences are to one another. For example, a reference genome might be so distantly related from the one being assembled, it would be akin to comparing a Model-T to a contemporary hybrid car.

For researchers interested in switchgrass, a perennial grass that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is investigating as a prospective biofuels feedstock, assembling the plant genome poses an even more complicated puzzle than usual because it has multiple copies of its chromosomes. The DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), in an international partnership that includes the DOE BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) and the DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), two of the three DOE Bioenergy Research Centers, has sequenced plant genomes of related candidate bioenergy crops such as sorghum and the model grass Brachypodium. Both plants have been used as references for switchgrass, however sorghum last shared a common ancestor with switchgrass more than 20 million years ago while Brachypodium last shared a common ancestor with switchgrass more than 50 million years ago. The genome of a much closer switchgrass relative -- foxtail millet (Setaria italica) -- is described in the May 13, 2012 edition of Nature Biotechnology. All three genomes, along with those of other plants sequenced by the DOE JGI are publicly accessible on www.phytozome.net.

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Microbe that can handle ionic liquids

R&D Magazine
Tuesday, May 15, 2012

In the search for technology by which economically competitive biofuels can be produced from cellulosic biomass, the combination of sugar-fermenting microbes and ionic liquid solvents looks to be a winner save for one major problem: The ionic liquids used to make cellulosic biomass more digestible for microbes can also be toxic to them. A solution to this conundrum, however, may be in the offing.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a multi-institutional partnership led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), have identified a tropical rainforest microbe that can endure relatively high concentrations of an ionic liquid used to dissolve cellulosic biomass. The researchers have also determined how the microbe is able to do this, a discovery that holds broad implications beyond the production of advanced biofuels.

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Speaker: Market should dictate crops used to produce biofuels

JournalStaronline.com
By KEVIN ABOUREZK / Lincoln Journal Star JournalStar.com
Posted: Wednesday, May 9, 2012 8:00 am

A renowned bioenergy pioneer said Tuesday that production of corn-based ethanol doesn't result in as much net energy as production of other biofuels.

Jay Keasling, CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, Calif., spoke as part of the Heuermann Lecture series at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

"You get just barely more energy out of the ethanol than you put into making it," said Keasling, who grew up on his family's corn and soybean farm outside of the small Nebraska town of Harvard. "That's a problem right now, a problem we need to fix."

Nearly half of the energy used to produce corn goes to making nitrogen-based fertilizer. Energy also is used to haul the corn to biorefineries, turn it into ethanol and then distill the ethanol. And, Keasling said, using corn as a biofuel competes with using it as food.

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JBEI researchers develop dynamic sensor-regulatory system

Biodiesel Magazine
By Erin Voegele April 05, 2012

Researchers at the U.S. DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute have developed a new technique that can significantly boost the microbial production of biofuels. The new technique, referred to as a dynamic sensor-regulator system (DSRS), was able to triple the amount of biobased diesel produced from glucose in one demonstration. According to information released by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is part of the JBEI, the DSRS system is able to detect metabolic changes in microbes during the production of fatty acid-based fuels or chemicals and control the expression of genes affecting that production.

“Microbial production of fuels and chemicals from fatty acids is a greener and sustainable alternative to chemical synthesis,” JBEI researcher Fuzhong Zhang. “However, high productivities, titers and yields are essential for microbial production of these chemical products to be economically viable, particularly in the cases of biofuels and low-value bulk chemicals.”

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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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JBEI spins out Lygos to commercialize sugar-metabolizing microbes

Biorefining Magazine
By Erin Voegele March 05, 2012

The U.S. DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has spun out its first company, Lygos. The technology developed at JBEI, which will be commercialized by the new company, features designer microorganisms that metabolize sugar and can produce a wide variety of molecules.

According to information released by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which leads JBEI, the technology essentially repurposes a class of proteins that have been used for decades to make antibiotics and other drugs. Polyketide synthases are a (PKS) are a family of multifunctional enzymes that produce polyketides, hydrocarbon chains that serve as the backbone for many natural and synthetic organic chemicals. The JBEI researchers redesigned the PKS pathway by mixing and matching genetic information to produce compounds that were never made by nature but are used in everyday synthetic materials.

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Can Bacteria Produce "Drop-In" Biofuels?

Scientific American
By Umair Irfan and ClimateWire January 17, 2012

Scientists are seeking help from microbes to produce road-ready biofuels

By tweaking the smallest units of life, scientists are making bigger gains in producing alternative and renewable energy, with recent efforts aimed at molecule-level controls and promoting fractal growth patterns to create different fuels and improve efficiencies.

Bacteria, which range from 0.5 to 5 microns in size, perform functions that can be exploited, enhanced and modified to produce fuels. As they move, breathe, eat and reproduce, bacteria produce byproducts like ethanol and hydrogen while feeding on simple sugars, starches and sunlight. The cells themselves can also be harvested for biodiesel precursors.

At the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), researchers are developing ways to control these fuel pathways with designer RNA molecules. RNA, like DNA, encodes information for cell functions, but RNA can also fold up and perform tasks, like signaling, regulating or catalyzing reactions.

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