Engineered for Tolerance, Bacteria Pump out Higher Quantity of Renewable Gasoline

Link to the Article

Bioengineers have recently found a way to increase the ability of bacteria to produce isopentenol. To do this, these bioengineers had to figure out a way to increase the tolerance of the bacteria so that the product did not inhibit its growth. Isopentenol was added to the culture of non-produced E.coli, the scientists then observed what genes were being shifted up and down while the E.coli responded to the solvent-stressor. 40 genes that the bacteria cranked up in response were chosen, then each gene was overexpressed in a bacterial strain actively producing isopentenol to see which might improve the strain's growth. MetR improved isopentenol production by 55% and mdlB improved isopentenol by 12%.

Finding a way to produce isopentenol and other sources for biofuels could be very beneficial in the future when it comes to finding a replacement for fossil fuels. Right now finding an efficient alternative to fossil fuels is one of the most pressing problems in the world. By finding a way to produce more isopentenol from these bacteria, it can introduce a new way find create more biofuels and decrease the need of fossil fuels. This would not only be an incredible discovery in science, but also work towards preserving the environment.

Let’s just harvest invasive species- problem solved?

Harvesting invasive plants for use as biofuels sounds enticing but in reality is very expensive and has many obstacles with the current ethanol pathways. Harvesting invasive plants big concern is the non-sustainability of the profit stream.  It doesn’t function like a normal crop, harvested and replanted, land managers try to get rid of invasive plants by herbicides so the possibility of multiple years of harvest isn’t promising.  A major issue is not enough biorefineries in a given area, which tends to be expensive with the transportation of plants long distances. Today it seems too costly but there are many possibilities to use invasive plants as an alternative source of energy such as combustion of electricity. Invasive biomass could drop existing supply co-fired with coal in electrical power plants.  This would help eliminate technological barriers that conversion to ethanol presents.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131120143754.htm
http://news.aces.illinois.edu/news/let%E2%80%99s-just-harvest-invasive-species-problem-solved

A More Effective Way of Converting Sugars Into Biofuels

Recently, scientists have taken interest in corn because it can be used in the production of ethanol. This is a biofuel that can potentially be a clean-burning, renewable fuel. Corn was chosen because of how abundant it is in the United States. This is the only type of biofuel that is produced in serious quantities. However, the current issue with the production of ethanol is the processing of the lignocellulosic biomass (plant dry matter). The yield is not greater than the costs of creating the ethanol. In a ScienceDaily article, a new synthetic metabolic pathway for breaking down glucoses was tested and confirmed to produce 50% more ethanol. 

This new pathway is called non-oxidative glycolysis (NOG). NOG was created to potentially replace the current natural processed called glycolysis. This pathway utilizes enzymes from several different pathways found in nature. In the preliminary in vitro studies, NOG was shown to be successful. With a genetically engineered recombinant strain of E. coli, the results indicated that there was complete carbon conservation unlike glycolysis which loses carbon through the production of CO², a byproduct. In conjunction with CO² fixation, biofuels yield would increase and therefore making the conversion process more effective.

E. coli using non-oxidative glycolysis

Biofuels are one of the most discussed advances in today's society. I strongly believe that biofuel can solve a lot of the problems found in United States economy. On the other hand, the dependence on corn (or other commonly produced crops that are used for fuel and food) could also lead to higher prices if droughts occurred. Specifically, gas, animal products and meats would all increase in price if corn production is halted. I believe that extra precautions need to be taken when combining sections of the food and energy economies together. 

New Biofuel from Horse Digestive Fungus

[caption id="attachment_7820" align="alignleft" width="530" caption="Horse Digestive Fungus"][/caption]

An article from Science Daily describes a new method of producing biofuel from horse feces.  Another article was published on MITnews.  Cellulose is the compound used for making biofuels from non-food plant materials but, it is difficult to extract through the lignin within the cell walls of plants.  In order to do this lignin must be removed, enzyme must be used to break down cellulose into sugars, then the sugars are digested by microbes to ferment into alcohol to produce the fuel.  This process is extensive and expensive.

A fungus found in the digestive tract of a horse lives on lignin-rich plants and converts the cellulose into sugars for the animal.  This could make the process biofuels much easier and less expensive.  Scientists are now trying to isolate the genes that produce these enzymes and genetically engineer them into yeasts.  Since yeasts are already commercially used for products such as antibiotics and foods, the production technology already exists.  So far all the genetic material of this gut fungus use to break down the cellulose has been isolated from horse feces.  These protein-encoding materials are named “transcriptome” facilitated the identification of hundreds of enzymes capable of breaking down the lignin and extracting cellulose.

The First Genome-Scale Network of Rice Genes Can Predict Their Functions to Help Make Biofuels

[caption id="attachment_3077" align="alignright" width="357" caption="This schematic is of a full-size view of a RiceNet layout. It's color-coded to show the probability of gene network links (red = higher probability and blue = lower probability). (Image source: Insuk Lee, Yonsei University)"][/caption]

An international team of researchers, including scientists in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), created the world’s first genome-scale model for predicting genes and gene networks in a plant species – rice, to be precise. This model, dubbed RiceNet, allows researchers to view multiple sets of data of genes and genetic pathways, which then allows them to predict the functions of entire gene networks. Professor Pamela Ronald and her co-researchers of the University of California (UC) Davis conducted experiments proving that RiceNet is indeed able to accurately determine gene functions in rice.

One may wonder why it would be so crucial to discover the functions of certain genes in rice. Well, rice is a food staple for about half of the world’s population and can be used as a model plant for the perennial plants, or those that live for longer than two years, that seem to be perfect candidates for creating cellulosic biofuels (fuels whose energy is derived from organic materials such as grass, corn, and vegetable oil through the process of carbon fixation), which would decrease dependence on other, non-renewable energy sources. Ronald said it best: “The ability to identify key genes that control simple or complex traits in rice has important biological, agricultural, and economic consequences. RiceNet offers an attractive and potentially rapid route for focusing crop engineering efforts on the small sets of genes that are deemed most likely to affect the traits of interest.”

Personally, I think that the ability to access multiple data sets at one time is very useful and efficient. Networks similar to RiceNet may well be the future of genetics research; in fact, RiceNet is already accessible for this very purpose: the creators of RiceNet also made an online model that can select ideal rice genes based on RiceNet’s data, which can be used here.