Department of Energy Funds cyanobacteria sequencing project
Making green mats of ethanol
By Tony Fitzpatrick
Excerpts:
1. The United States Department of Energy (DOE) has devoted $1.6 million to sequencing the DNA of six photosynthetic bacteria that Washington University in St. Louis biologists will examine for their potential as one of the next great sources of biofuel
2. Microscopic cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) capture sunlight and then do a variety of biochemical processes. One potential process, the clean production of ethanol, is a high priority for DOE.
3. Himadri Pakrasi, Ph.D., Washington University Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, and Professor of Energy in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, will head a team of biologists at Washington University and elsewhere in the analysis of the genomes of six related strains of Cyanothece bacteria.
4. One additional Cyanothece strain, 51142, already has been sequenced by the Washington University Genome Squencing Center, the other six will be sequenced at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif.
5. The strains, two isolated from rice paddies in Taiwan, one in a rice paddy in India, and three others from the deep ocean, are related, but each one comes from different environmental backgrounds and might metabolize differently. Thus, combining traits of the different strains could provide the most efficient form of bioenergy.
6. Cyanobacteria have a distinct advantage over biomass, such as corn or other grasses, in producing ethanol, because they use carbon dioxide as their primary cellular carbon source and emit no carbons and they naturally do fermentation.
7. One possible way to produce ethanol using Cyanothece strains is a hybrid combination of the microbe and plant matter where the cyanobacteria coexist with plants and enable fermentation.
Full report here
Link suggested by the Bioconversion Blog
Oilgae - Oil & Biodiesel from Algae
Oilgae Blog
algOS - Biodiesel from Algae Open Source
Oilgae - Oil & Biodiesel from Algae provides links, directory, web links resources for algae-based biofuels & biodiesel. Intended to be useful for research, information, inputs, news for buyers, sellers, manufacturers, traders, suppliers, producers, exporters / importers of algal oil and algal fuels. Will provide info on biofuel feedstock, algal feedstocks, algae oil and link details on fuel from algae, bio-fuel, bio-diesel, algal oils & bio-fuels production and uses, biofuels trade & market resources, price data, statistics, prices, demand-supply for buyer, seller, manufacturer, trader, supplier, exporter and producer
No comments:
Post a Comment