Major Obstacles to Cellulosic Biofuel Production Overcome With New Yeast Strain
This article was really interesting. It is so amazing what we can do with science these days.
Another major breakthrough in biofuel production - and for the good kind, cellulosic - in which yeast have been designed to better metabolize glucose and, excitingly, xylose, another type of sugar. Excellent addition to some other major breakthroughs, such as metabolizing galactose (another type of sugar), the Baking Soda discovery, increasing yeast’s tolerance to ethanol, as well as other breakthroughs in biofuels and biomaterials (e.g. here, here and here).
RCS Highlights:
[Yeast] is very good at utilizing glucose… [But] Most yeast strains that are engineered to metabolize xylose do so very slowly… [which] adds significantly to the cost of biofuels production…
Jin and his colleagues converted [the yeast] to one that will consume both types of sugar faster and more efficiently than any strain currently in use in the biofuel industry…
“[D]ouble the amount of sugar is consumed in the same amount of time and produces more than double the amount of ethanol. It’s a huge synergistic effect of co-fermentation.”
The new yeast strain is at least 20 percent more efficient at converting xylose to ethanol than other strains, making it “the best xylose-fermenting strain” reported in any study, Jin said…
The cost benefits of this advance in co-fermentation are very significant, Jin said. “We don’t have to do two separate fermentations,” he said. “We can do it all in one pot. And the yield is even higher than the industry standard. We are pretty sure that this research can be commercialized very soon.”…
The Energy Biosciences Institute, a BP-funded initiative, supported the research. [Gotta give credit where credit is due.-RCS]
Science is Awesome.
