Panorea Avdis, Director of Governor Brown’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz), visited the Biosciences Area’s Emery Station Operations Center on September 6 to learn more about the biosciences and bioeconomy related initiatives. GO-Biz was created to serve as California’s single point of contact for economic development and job creation efforts and is an important one-stop shop for companies that want to take advantage of California incentives.
JBEI/BSE Paper Among PLOS ONE Top 10% Most Cited Articles
A paper by Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) researchers has been ranked among the top 10% most cited PLOS ONE articles. “A Thermophilic Ionic liquid-tolerant Cellulase Cocktail for the Production of Cellulosic Biofuels” published in 2012 has already been viewed 8,871 times and cited 50 times as of today. The paper reports the development of an Ionic Liquid-tolerant cellulase cocktail by combining thermophilic bacterial glycoside hydrolases produced by a mixed consortia with recombinant glycoside hydrolases.
Papers by JBEI/BSE Researchers Among Journal’s Most Impactful Articles
Two papers by Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and Biological Systems and Engineering (BSE) researchers are currently ranked among the most popular articles published in the journal BioEnergy Research. “An Investigation on the Economic Feasibility of Macroalgae as a Potential Feedstock for Biorefineries,” published in in 2015, is among the most downloaded, and “Assessment of Lignocellulosic Biomass Using Analytical Spectroscopy: an Evolution to High-Throughput Techniques,” published in 2014, is among the most cited. In the former paper, the authors—Murthy Konda, Seema Singh, Blake Simmons, and the late Daniel Klein-Marchschamer—presented a detailed technoeoconomic analysis of the economic potential and cost drivers of macroalgae as a feedstock for the production of biofuels and biochemicals. In the latter, Jason Lupoi, Singh, and Simmons undertook a comparative review of rapid, high-throughput spectroscopic techniques and standard, more time-intensive techniques to analyze candidate terrestrial biomass feedstocks for desirable traits.
Could This Enzyme Help Turn Biofuel Waste into Something Useful?
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Sandia National Laboratories working at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have resolved the protein structure of the enzyme LigM, which is utilized by the soil bacterium Sphingomonas to metabolize aryl compounds derived from lignin, the stiff, organic material that gives plants their structure. Their work is reported in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read more in the Berkeley Lab News Center.
Finding Diamonds in the Rough
New crystallography finding by JBEI and GLBRC benefits bioenergy industry
During the kraft process used to convert wood into wood pulp, the structural material lignin is partially converted into molecules like stilbene. Stilbenes are also naturally occurring in plants and some bacteria, and may play a role in plant pathogen resistance.
Currently, the deconstruction of plant biomass into cellulose and lignin is an expensive process. Lignin accounts for about 30 percent of plant cell wall carbon, and its conversion into chemicals or fuels could have a significant positive impact on the economics of processing lignocellulosic biomass. Enzymes capable of producing useful compounds from the breakdown of stilbenes and similar molecules could be employed for this. Collaborators from two of the Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Centers now have gained first-hand insight into how a stilbene cleaving oxygenase (SCO) carries out this unusual chemical reaction.
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