The study, in the journal Science, tackles a major barrier to the development of more affordable and environmentally sustainable biofuels. Rather than relying on the fermentation of simple sugars in food crops such as corn, beets or sugar cane (which is environmentally costly and threatens the food supply) researchers are looking for better ways to…
How Now, Inside the Cow: Nearly 30,000 Novel Enzymes for Biofuel Production Improvements
WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—Cows eat grass—this has been observed for eons. From this fibrous diet consisting mainly of the tough to degrade plant cell wall materials cellulose and hemicellulose, substances of no nutritional value to most animals, ruminants manage to extract all they need to nourish themselves, their progeny and their keepers. And now, the cow,…
UI on cow rumen metagenome study in EurekAlert
“The problem with second-generation biofuels is the problem of unlocking the soluble fermentable sugars that are in the plant cell wall,” said University of Illinois animal sciences professor Roderick Mackie, an author on the study whose research into the microbial life of the bovine rumen set the stage for the new approach. “The cow’s been…
Cow rumen metagenome study on Reuters
In this case, the goal was to find microbes that make enzymes that can efficiently break down the toughest fibers in switchgrass, a tough crop that can be used to produce ethanol and which can grow in places where food crops do not grow well. But switchgrass is very tough to break down. Read more…
Cow rumen metagenome study on MSNBC.com
“Cellulosic ethanol” would use non-food plants such as switchgrass, which is one of the most promising bioenergy crops. But, while advances have been made, it’s still not economically viable.The researchers didn’t come up with the magic mix of enzymes that will most efficiently break down switchgrass and other non-food plants. But they — and the…
Cow rumen metagenome study in Scientific American
“If the industry is going to move forward, it’s going to need new enzymes,” says Eddy Rubin, the director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute. Rubin and 16 colleagues report in the January 28 issue of Science how they discovered nearly 30,000 new enzyme candidates by analyzing DNA collected from a cow’s…
Cow rumen metagenome study on EurekAlert
“Microbes have evolved over millions of years to efficiently degrade recalcitrant biomass,” said Eddy Rubin, Director of the JGI and a lead on this study. “Communities of these organisms can be found in diverse ecosystems, such as in the rumen of cows, the guts of termites, in compost piles, as well as covering the forest…
Cow rumen metagenome study in This Week in Science
Identification of additional enzymes that can degrade cellulose efficiently should help in the development of biofuels on an industrial scale. Uncultured microorganisms living in cow rumen are highly effective at degrading plant cell walls. Hess et al. used metagenomics and single-genome sequencing to assemble draft genomes from microbes adhering to rumen-incubated switchgrass to identify nearly…
Rhizobial project on The West Australian
The Centre for Rhizobium Studies, the Australian side of the project led by Dr Wayne Reeve, has the task of sequencing the genomes of rhizobia selected from distinct geographic regions across the globe.The US side of the project will be run at the Joint Genome Institute, led by head of the microbial program Dr Nikos…
Citrus genomes project in Tehran Times
The “publication of the sweet orange and tangerine genomes will accelerate the discovery of innovative solutions to a myriad of pest and disease problems that threaten citrus production,” said Dan Gunter, chief operating officer of the Citrus Research and Development Foundation Inc. Read more on the Tehran Times.