New Method for Bio-Designing Yeast Could Improve Biofuel Production
Friday, February 12, 2016 - 16:31
in Physics & Chemistry
An assistant research specialist at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) has designed a new strain of yeast that could improve the efficiency of making fuel from cellulosic biomass such as switchgrass. Both the yeast strain and the method of its design could help overcome a significant bottleneck in the biofuels pipeline -- namely, that the powerful solvents so good at breaking down biomass also sometimes hinder the next critical step of the process, fermentation.