Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are trying to discover salt-loving organisms that may be more efficient in treating biomass and improve sugar yield for biofuel production. The class of solvents known as ionic liquids, are liquid forms of salt that…
UCLA microbiologists find energy-efficient structures in archaeon
a type of Archaea known as Methanosprillum hungatei contains incredibly efficient energy-storage structures. The findings are published in the July 5 issue of the journal Environmental Microbiology. M. hungatei is of considerable environmental significance because of its unique ability to form symbiotic relationships with syntrophic bacteria to break down organic matter and produce methane gas. Yet while their important role in…
Efficiency Improvements in Biofuels Production
To overcome the difficulties of converting cellulosic biomass into high energy-content fuel, researchers have been seeking to improve various stages of the process. One big obstacle that stands in the way is that most enzymes are inefficient at breaking down biomass when in the presence of ionic liquids, solvents that have proven effective at treating the…
DOE JGI/JBEI collaboration in Green Car Congress
Such salt-tolerant enzymes, particularly cellulases, offer significant advantages for industrial utility over conventional enzymes, they said. The group plans to expand this research to develop a full complement of enzymes that is tailored for the ionic liquid process technology with the goal of demonstrating a complete biomass-to-sugar process, one they hope can enable the commercial…
A Microbiological “Template” for Mitigating Methane Emissions
WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—Carbon dioxide may be the most name-dropped greenhouse gas, but methane is 20 times more potent. In 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculated that 20 percent of the nation’s human-related methane emissions were attributable to livestock digestive processes. In Australia, livestock emissions account for 12 percent of the country’s total greenhouse gas…
Salt-loving Microbe Provides New Enzymes for the Production of Next Gen Biofuels
WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—In order to realize the full potential of advanced biofuels that are derived from non-food sources of lignocellulosic biomass—e.g., agricultural, forestry, and municipal waste, and crops such as poplar, switchgrass and miscanthus—new technologies that can efficiently and cost-effectively break down this biomass into simple sugars are required. Existing biomass pretreatment technologies are typically…
Consortium Drives Genome Standards
As technology for sequencing genomes has become cheaper and more widely accessible, there is a greater urgency to institute a standardized, comprehensive language for researchers to share their findings. The Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC), an open-membership organization, is building a culture of collaboration to achieve greater efficiencies by spending less time combing through and interpreting inconsistent…
GreenCut2: Algorithm to ID Plant Protein Functions
Researchers use genome sequencing to inform various cellular processes in land plants and algae, including the details of photosynthesis. Despite the access to an increasing number of plant genomes (most of which have been generated by the DOE JGI), it remains difficult to correlate protein information with function, until now. For example, identifying the role…
GreenCut algorithm in Crop Biotech Update
Grossman and colleagues revealed that many of the GreenCut proteins are also present in ancient cyanobacteria, red algae, and diatoms. Further assessment of these proteins is expected to bring more discoveries about their functions in photosynthetic cells, and how the photosynthetic cells might be adapted to survive various environmental conditions. Read more in ISAAA’s Crop…
GreenCut algorithm in e! Science News
Using advanced computational tools to analyze the genomes of 28 different plants and photosynthetic organisms, Grossman and his colleagues at the University of California in Los Angeles and the Joint Genome Institute of the Department of Energy were able to identify 597 proteins encoded on plant and green algal genomes, but that are not present…