We are developing new, affordable, scalable, and effective bioproducts to promote a robust bioeconomy. By enabling optimized bioconversion of diverse feedstocks, we can make a wide range of fuels and chemicals through biology. We are actively discovering fundamental aspects of photosynthesis that can be harnessed to create bio-based energy and materials through processes that mimic nature. All of these activities will secure the ability of the U.S. to access renewable energy, produce energy domestically, and spur new biomanufacturing industries.
Advanced transportation fuels
Using microbial fermentation and other biomanufacturing processes to convert plant waste into liquid fuels for transportation and aviation.
Carbon waste biorefineries
Harnessing microbes to produce biofuels and bioproducts from industrial emissions.
Techno-economic analysis
A type of simulation that analyzes the financial and environmental outcomes of biomanufacturing processes based on the technology used and the chemical inputs, allowing researchers to design the most efficient and responsible “recipes” for large-scale production.
Biofuel process development and scale-up
Developing and optimizing all phases of the biofuel manufacturing processes, from engineering microbes to break down woody plant tissue to final product purification.
Bio-advantaged fuel additives
Using bio-based processes to address market needs by improving the performance of traditional fuels.
The ABPDU is a state-of-the-art facility for testing and developing emerging biofuels, bio-based chemicals, and biomaterial technologies in a process demonstration production environment.
Several X-ray beamlines at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) are dedicated to crystallography and small-angle scattering for cutting-edge structural biology investigations.
The ABF is a consortium of seven national labs funded by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. It’s goal is to enable biorefineries to achieve 50% reductions in time to bioprocess scale-up, through the development and deployment of technologies enabling commercially relevant biomanufacturing of a wide range of bioproducts by both new and established industrial hosts.
The BioManufactory focuses on processes for renewable energy generation, biomanufacturing of molecules that do not depend on fossil-fuel inputs, engineered microbiomes that promote plant growth and reduce dependence on chemical inputs, and applications that protect the environment for future generations. Additional applications include new antibiotic discovery, and development of new food and feed technologies. Industry partner project requirements — from early-stage discovery to commercialization — can be accomplished through the The BioManufactory at Berkeley Lab.
CAMERA is a coordinated team of applied mathematicians, computer scientists, light scientists, materials scientists, and computational chemists focused on targeted science problems, with initial involvements aimed at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), Molecular Foundry, and National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM). The goal is to accelerate the transfer of new mathematical ideas to experimental science.
JBEI researchers are using the latest tools in molecular biology, chemical engineering, and computational and robotic technologies to transform biomass into biofuels and bioproducts.
The JGI provides integrated high-throughput sequencing, DNA design and synthesis, cell metabolite analysis, and computational analysis that helps researchers engineer better biofuel plant species and microbes that convert tough plant matter into fuel precursors like ethanol.
KBase is an open platform for comparative functional genomics and systems biology for microbes, plants, and their communities. KBase integrates a variety of data and analysis tools into an easy-to-use, collaborative platform for building increasingly realistic models for biological function.
The mission of LiSA is to directly produce liquid fuels by artificial photosynthesis, using only sunlight and components of air, water, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. The initiative focuses on establishing the science principles by which coupled microenvironments used for catalysis, transport, and light capture can be co-designed to achieve high efficiency and selectivity for the desired products.
A multi-national laboratory partnership led by Berkeley Lab, NMDC seeks to address fundamental roadblocks in microbiome data science and gaps in transdisciplinary collaboration. It provides data resources, multi-omics integration, and metabolic modeling to further support ongoing genomics and synthetic biology efforts.
New research by a team that includes scientists from Biosciences shows that some simple changes to Agrobacterium tumefaciens can significantly improve the efficiency of introducing DNA into a genome, a process known as transformation.
