US Scientists Develop ‘Super Yeast' for Improved Efficiency of Biofuel Production

US scientists have found a way to nearly double the efficiency of industrial yeast strains in converting plant sugars to biofuel. According to University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center scientists, the newly engineered "super yeast" could boost the economics of making ethanol, specialty biofuels, and bioproducts.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been the choice for fermentation for centuries. However, it does not consume xylose, a sugar that makes up nearly half of available plant sugars. In their study, the researchers isolated genetic mutations that will allow S. cerevisiae to convert xylose into ethanol.

The team took ten months to create a strain of S. cerevisiae that could ferment xylose. Once they had isolated super yeast, GLBRCY128, they compared its genome to the original strain and found the four gene mutations responsible for the behavior. To verify their findings, the researchers manually deleted these mutations from the parent strain, producing the same result.

Their work could open up more research on biofuels including those on super yeast's potentially powerful role in creating specialty biofuels and bioproducts.