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Content Tagged "biomass"

Structural Analysis of Cow and Hoatzin Microbial Communities

Inside the guts of many animals, microbes break down the plant fibers ingested as part of their diet. These microbes are of interest to bioenergy researchers who want to learn from nature and apply these cellulosic degradation capabilities toward biofuel production. To this end, at the JGI, several sequencing projects have focused on the microbial… [Read More]

Genomic analysis of self-fertilizing fungi

Filamentous fungi help decay plant material, a process which has applications for producing biofuels and other products. The model organism for filamentous fungi is Neurospora tetrasperma. Neurospora tetrasperma rosette (Image by Namboori B. Raju, Stanford University) Selected for the DOE JGI’s 2007 Community Sequencing Program, the fungi is of interest to researchers such as studying… [Read More]

Soil biocrust microbial genome

One of the DOE JGI’s 2011 Community Sequencing Program projects involves studying biological soil crusts to understand their role in the global carbon cycle. Found in arid lands which make up nearly half of the planet’s total land mass, communities of lichens, mosses and cyanobacteria use soil particles to form biocrusts less than half an… [Read More]

High-temperature enzymes for biomass breakdown

To overcome the challenge of breaking down cellulosic biomass for commercial biofuel production, which involves the application of high temperatures, a team of researchers including DOE JGI’s Martin Allgaier, now at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Germany, and Phil Hugenholtz, now director of the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics at the University… [Read More]

Dry rot (Serpula) genome project in BasqueResearch.com

Science journal has published research work on the sequence of the genome of the Serpula lacrymans fungus and in which the Public University of Navarre (UPNA) lecturers Gerardo Pisabarro de Lucas and José Antonio Oguiza Tomé, professor and senior lecturer in Microbiology respectively, participated. The research, largely funded by the US Department of Energy through… [Read More]

Xylose-fermenting yeast project in Ethanol Producer

Using Mother Nature as their teacher, researchers at the U.S. DOE’s Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, along with the DOE’s Joint Genome Institute, have sequenced the genomes of two types of yeasts found in bark beetles and then compared and contrasted the results with other yeasts’ genome sequences to determine which can best convert the… [Read More]

Sweetening the Biofuels Production Process

Currently, converting cellulosic biomass into biofuels is inefficient and costly.  One of the barriers to reducing costs and yields is that xylose, a five-carbon sugar that represents nearly half of available sugars in plant (in the form of hemicellulose), is extremely difficult and time-consuming to break down using enzymes sourced from conventional yeast strains. In… [Read More]

Ethanol Contaminant Could Assist Production Efficiency

An Ethanol plant in Bairstown, Iowa (Courtesy of USDA) In the August edition of The Journal of Bacteriology, researchers led by long-time collaborator David Mills of the University of California Davis, and including DOE JGI’s Alex Copeland, Olga Chertkov and Lynne Goodwin, announced the completed genome sequence of Lactobacillus buchneri and has now been made… [Read More]

Destroyer of Houses Harnessed for Biofuel Production

Although people rarely see the positives when their wooden houses begin to rot, scientists at the DOE JGI have found a silver lining in this destructive phenomenon. Through DNA sequencing and a comparative analysis with other fungi that DOE JGI has characterized, researchers have homed in on the mechanisms that the brown rot, Serpula lacrymans,… [Read More]

Dry rot (Serpula) genome project on eNews Park Forest

In 2007 the US Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute sequenced Serpula lacrymans in order to see if the way it breaks down cellulose in wood could be harnessed for biofuel production. An international team analysing the genome have found the enzyme mechanisms that could explain the aggressive decay caused by this form of dry… [Read More]