Researchers Introduce Metabolic Path into Yeast to Improve Biofuel Production

Researchers from the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), a partnership that includes Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley, have found a way to increase the yeast's production of fuels and other chemicals by introducing new metabolic pathways into them. These pathways enable the microbes to efficiently ferment cellulose and hemicellulose without pre-treatments or enzymes.

Jamie Cate, a scientist in Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division and a professor of biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology at UC Berkeley, and a team of researchers identified metabolic pathways in the fungus Neurospora crassa that digest xylose. To enable these pathways to work in yeast, Cate and his collaborators introduced five new genes into the yeast.

"We believe that introducing N. crassa metabolic pathways into yeast could find widespread use in helping to overcome existing bottlenecks to the fermentation of lignocellulosic feedstocks as a sustainable and economical source of biofuels and renewable chemicals," Cate says.