E. coli bacteria engineered to eat switchgrass and make transportation fuels
Date: 1.12.2011
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have engineered the first strains of Escherichia coli bacteria that can digest switchgrass biomass and synthesize its sugars into all three of those transportation fuels. What's more, the microbes are able to do this without any help from enzymeadditives.
"This work shows that we can reduce one of the most expensive parts of the biofuel production process, the addition of enzymes to depolymerize cellulose and hemicellulose into fermentable sugars," says Jay Keasling, CEO of JBEI and leader of this research. "This will enable us to reduce fuel production costs by consolidating two steps - depolymerizing cellulose and hemicellulose into sugars, and fermenting the sugars into fuels - into a single step or one pot operation."
