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The efficiency and cost of current lignocellulosic enzymes still limit the large-scale production of cellulosic ethanol in industry. Residual lignin after pretreatment severely depresses the activity of polysa...
Enzymatic hydrolysis is a crucial step of biomass conversion into biofuels and different pretreatments have been proposed to improve the process efficiency. Amongst the various factors affecting hydrolysis yie...
The expression of biomass-degrading enzymes (such as cellobiohydrolases) in transgenic plants has the potential to reduce the costs of biomass saccharification by providing a source of enzymes to supplement co...
Efficient industrial processes for converting plant lignocellulosic materials into biofuels are a key to global efforts to come up with alternative energy sources to fossil fuels. Novel cellulolytic enzymes ha...
The concept of adaptive evolution implies underlying genetic mutations conferring a selective advantage to an organism under particular environmental conditions. Thus, a flow cytometry-based strategy was used ...
The lipid content of microalgae is regarded as an important indicator for biodiesel. Many attempts have been made to increase the lipid content of microalgae through biochemical and genetic engineering. Signif...
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a key organism used for the manufacture of renewable fuels and chemicals, has been engineered to utilize non-native sugars derived from plant cell walls, such as cellobiose and xylose. H...
Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 is one of the model microorganisms used for extracellular electron transfer. In this study, to elucidate the capability and the relevant metabolic processes of S. oneidensis MR-1 involv...
The emergence of biofuels produced through yeast fermentation represents an important avenue for sustainable energy production. Despite all its advantages, this process is vulnerable to contamination by other ...
Efficient xylose fermentation by yeast would improve the economical and sustainable nature of biofuels production from lignocellulosic biomass. However, the efficiency of xylose fermentation by the yeast Saccharo...
Wheat straw is an attractive substrate for second generation ethanol production because it will complement and augment wheat production rather than competing with food production. However, like other sources o...
Lignocellulosic biomass from plant biomass, especially softwoods, are well-known to present difficulties during attempts at hydrolysis due to their rigid structure. Pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass with...
Hydrogen is regarded as an attractive future energy carrier for its high energy content and zero CO2 emission. Currently, the majority of hydrogen is generated from fossil fuels. However, from an environmental pe...
The recalcitrance of lignocellulosic biomass is a major limitation for its conversion into biofuels by enzymatic hydrolysis. The use of a pretreatment technology is an essential step to diminish biomass recalc...
Understanding the diversity of lignocellulose-degrading enzymes in nature will provide insights for the improvement of cellulolytic enzyme cocktails used in the biofuels industry. Two families of enzymes, fung...
We previously cloned a 1,3-specific lipase gene from the fungus Rhizomucor miehei and expressed it in methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris strain GS115. The enzyme produced (termed RML) was able to catalyze metha...
The search for novel thermostable xylanases for industrial use has intensified in recent years, and thermophilic fungi are a promising source of useful enzymes. The present work reports the heterologous expres...
The European Union has made it a strategic objective to develop its biofuels market in order to minimize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, to help mitigate climate change and to address energy insecurity within ...
Ligninolytic peroxidases are divided into three families: manganese peroxidases (MnPs), lignin peroxidases (LiPs), and versatile peroxidases (VPs). The latter two are able to degrade intact lignins, as shown u...
Lactobacillus plantarum is an attractive candidate for metabolic engineering towards bioprocessing of lignocellulosic biomass to ethanol or polylactic acid, as its natural characteristics include high ethanol and...
High-cost production of bioplastics polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) is a major concern for their large scale application. In order to produce PHA economically, new technology must be developed to reduce costs on e...
Microalgae are ideal raw materials for biodiesel and bioactive compounds. Glycerol-3-phosphate is formed from dihydroxyacetone phosphate (DHAP) through the glycolytic pathway catalyzed by glycerol-3-phosphate ...
Cellulose is the most abundant biomass on earth. The major players in cellulose degradation in nature are cellulases produced by microorganisms. Aerobic filamentous fungi are the main sources of commercial cel...
2,3,5,6-Tetramethylpyrazine (TMP) is a popular food flavour additive. This biologically active ingredient has additional potential dietotherapy functions, such as in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular health. ...
The economics of producing only electricity from residues, which comprise of surplus bagasse and 50% post-harvest residues, at an existing sugar mill in South Africa was compared to the coproduction of ethanol...
One of the challenges facing the fuel ethanol industry is the management of bacterial contamination during fermentation. Lactobacillus species are the predominant contaminants that decrease the profitability of b...
Engineered fungi are attractive platforms for the production of plant cell wall hydrolytic enzymes which, among other biotechnological applications, are required for the efficient conversion of biomass to gluc...
Two major hurdles for successful production of second-generation bioethanol are the presence of inhibitory compounds in lignocellulosic media, and the fact that Saccharomyces cerevisiae cannot naturally utilise p...
Biosynthesis of liquid fuels and biomass-based building block chemicals from microorganisms have been regarded as a competitive alternative route to traditional. Zymomonas mobilis possesses a number of desirable ...
Clostridium clariflavum is an anaerobic, thermophilic, Gram-positive bacterium, capable of growth on crystalline cellulose as a single carbon source. The genome of C. clariflavum has been sequenced to completion,...
Molecular engineering of the intermediary physiology of cyanobacteria has become important for the sustainable production of biofuels and commodity compounds from CO2 and sunlight by “designer microbes.” The chem...
The deconstruction of renewable biomass feedstocks into soluble sugars at low cost is a critical component of the biochemical conversion of biomass to fuels and chemicals. Providing low cost high concentration...
Biodiesel production from marine microalgae has received much attention as microalgae can be cultivated on non-arable land without the use of potable water, and with the additional benefits of mitigating CO2 emis...
Camelina sativa (L.) Crantz, known by such popular names as “gold-of-pleasure” and “false flax,” is an alternative oilseed crop for biofuel production and can be grown in harsh environments. Considerable interest...
Ensiling may act as a pretreatment of fresh grass biomass and increase the enzymatic conversion of structural carbohydrates to fermentable sugars. However, ensiling does not provide sufficient severity to be a...
Fatty alcohols are widely used in industrial chemicals. The biosynthetic pathways for fatty alcohols are diverse and widely existing in nature. They display a high capacity to produce fatty alcohols by the met...
In order to rapidly and efficiently screen potential biofuel feedstock candidates for quintessential traits, robust high-throughput analytical techniques must be developed and honed. The traditional methods of...
Mixed microbial cultures, in which bacteria and fungi interact, have been proposed as an efficient way to deconstruct plant waste. The characterization of specific microbial consortia could be the starting poi...
Jatropha curcas is being promoted as a new bioenergy crop in tropical and subtropical regions due to its high amount of seed oil and its potential capacity to grow on marginal land for biofuel production. However...
Previous research focused on pretreatment of biomass, production of fermentable sugars and their consumption to produce ethanol. The main goal of the work was to economise the production process cost of fermen...
Butanol production directly from CO2 in photosynthetic cyanobacteria is restricted by the high toxicity of butanol to the hosts. In previous studies, we have found that a few two-component signal transduction sys...
Oxygenic photosynthetic microorganisms such as cyanobacteria and microalgae have attracted attention as an alternative carbon source for the next generation of biofuels. Glycogen abundantly accumulated in cyan...
There is still considerable debate regarding the actual mechanism by which a “cellulase mixture” deconstructs cellulosic materials, with accessibility to the substrate at the microscopic level being one of the...
Ionic liquid (IL) pretreatment could enable an economically viable route to produce biofuels by providing efficient means to extract sugars and lignin from lignocellulosic biomass. However, to realize this, no...
Cellobiose and xylose co-fermentation holds promise for efficiently producing biofuels from plant biomass. Cellobiose phosphorylase (CBP), an intracellular enzyme generally found in anaerobic bacteria, cleaves...
Chlorella is one of the few microalgae employed for human consumption. It typically has a high protein content, but it can also accumulate high amounts of lipids or carbohydrates under stress conditions and, for ...
Biofuels are a well-known alternative to the largely used fossil-derived fuels, however the competition with food production is an ethical dilemma. Fortunately a solution is offered by second-generation biofue...
Consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) of lignocellulosic biomass to hydrogen offers great potential for lower cost and higher efficiency compared to processes featuring dedicated cellulase production. Current studi...
Sterols are vital structural and regulatory components in eukaryotic cells; however, their biosynthetic pathways and functional roles in microalgae remain poorly understood.
Clostridium thermocellum is a thermophilic anaerobic bacterium that degrades cellulose by using a highly effective cellulosome, a macromolecular complex consisting of multiple cellulose degrading enzymes organize...