Adapted from John Gladden’s presentation

Provide the nation with clean, green, and renewable transportation fuels that will create jobs and boost the economy

Petroleum-based transportation fuels CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, global warming CO2 CO2 CO2 CO2 CO2 CO2 CO2 There’s a limited supply of fossil fuels Limited supply of fossil fuels, they won’t be around for forever. The CO2 emitted from gasoline made from fossil fuels accumulate into the air and build up.

Renewable transportation fuels Using plants creates a CO2 loop CO2 Plants are renewable CO2 Because the carbon source is coming from the plant to begin with, the plant is able to reabsorb the CO2 and it will not accumulate in the atmosphere.

Renewable transportation fuels are already being used sugar Ferment with yeast Distill ethanol Blend into gasoline Starch from corn This is the same yeast used to make bread, beer, wine and spirits!

Corn works but is a limited solution Corn is easy to use but you can’t grow enough for food and fuel sugar Ferment with yeast Distill ethanol Blend into gasoline Competition with food and fuel industries. Also, you need to grow corn in specific places (It can’t just grow anywhere). Starch from corn

We can use cellulose from plants instead of starch sugar Ferment with yeast Distill ethanol Blend into gasoline Cellulose from plants Can use the biomass from any plant to extract the cellulose. There are also other sugars in plants that researchers are looking at, but we are focusing on cellulose here. Plants have lots of sugar in them (50 to 80%)! There is one billon tons of plants available for fuel every year! sugar sugar

JBEI: fuels from plants There are 3 departments at JBEI. Feedstock, deconstruction and fuel synthesis. The work that I did over the summer had to do with deconstruction. Feedstock: developing plants whose sugar biomass can be more easily deconstructed to produce biofuel. Deconstruction: aims to convert cellulose in plant biomass to fermentable sugar, which can be used to synthesize fuel. Fuel Synthesis: use techniques in synthetic biology engineer microbes that can efficiently ferment the complex sugars from the biomass of plants into biofuel.

The BIG problem It’s VERY difficult to get sugar out of plants! The sugars are locked inside cellulose and hemicellulose. sugar

Nature knows how to do it There are many fungi and bacteria that can break down plants

Fungi and bacteria use enzymes to break down plants Cellulase Cellulase is the enzyme that breaks down cellulose.

iCLEM students will hunt for new cellulase producing organisms There are 3 departments at JBEI. Feedstock, deconstruction and fuel synthesis. The work that I did over the summer had to do with deconstruction and finding microbes that produces cellulases naturally. Feedstock: developing plants whose sugar biomass can be more easily deconstructed to produce biofuel. Deconstruction: aims to convert cellulose in plant biomass to fermentable sugar, which can be used to synthesize fuel. Fuel Synthesis: use techniques in synthetic biology engineer microbes that can efficiently ferment the complex sugars from the biomass of plants into biofuel. You are here

iCLEM students found cellulase producing organisms Isolate organisms Collect organisms from nature Characterize and ID the isolates Assay for cellulases