Indonesia's Coordinating Minister of Maritime Affairs, Luhut Binsar Panjaitan, recently announced that the country will promote the use of palm oil for biofuels to reduce its imports, as well as its dependency on other countries.

The Minister said that Indonesia must be ready to face changes in current global situations that can change the global political and economic maps. For instance, the US, the largest oil importer in the world as of mid-2016, has started reducing its dependency on other countries.

Indonesia will reduce imports in various sectors. The Indonesian government is now promoting the increase of palm oil usage for biofuels to 20% as it can reduce import of fossil-based fuels. The government also wants to increase the yield of palm oil farmers.

Cathay Pacific Airways has pledged a huge cut in climate-changing gases by going big on biofuels. The Hong Kong carrier will be one of the first airlines to switch to cleaner jet fuels on an industrial scale. The city government aims to cut annual carbon emissions in half by 2030.

Fulcrum Bioenergy, a US-based biofuel producer, and Cathay Pacific signed an agreement in 2014, helping the airline meet its biofuel supply targets. Despite the change, Cathay Pacific passengers are unlikely to see a rise in fares, because the biofuel investments since 2014 have been absorbed into the company's operating costs. However, it is too early to tell whether the switch could lower ticket prices.

Cathay Pacific planes will use fuel made from landfill trash. Many of its flights from the United States, where the fuel is being produced, will fly to Hong Kong using a half-half mix of biofuel and conventional fuel by 2019. It is on these long flights that the company expects an 80% emission reduction.

Renewable diesel company Neste has produced 10,000 liters of renewable diesel from waste produced from ham fat. The company took 12,000 kgs of waste fat from 40,000 Finnish households, which they voluntarily donated to the charity campaign, "Kinkkutemppu", which literally translates into "Ham Trick".

He also said that the large amount of waste fat Neste received is an indication of the interest of Finnish people towards this campaign and the circular economy in general. The campaign is a good example of how waste and residues can be utilized in energy production and as a raw material for renewable fuels.

The idea for the campaign started from the Chemical Industry Federation of Finland. Once underway, fat recycling containers were placed all over Finland, where residents can dump their waste fat. Neste then collected ham fat and used it to produce their renewable diesel.

The Agrobacterium tumefaciens T-DNA oncogene T-6b induces the development of tumors in vegetative tissues of transgenic plants, which is related to increases in soluble sugar contents. To verify the potential roles of T-6b in the distribution of carbon in developing seeds, the team of Yunkai Jin and Jia Hu from Hunan Agricultural University in China attached an endosperm-specific promoter to the T-6b gene in transgenic Arabidopsis plants.

The expression of the T-6b oncogene in the reproductive organs did not induce the development of tumors, but promoted endosperm expansion, which increased the total seed biomass by more than 10%. Furthermore, the T-6b gene also increased oil content in mature seeds and decreased the starch and mucilage content.

T-6b enhances seed biomass and helps oil biosynthesis in reproductive organs without disturbing vegetative growth and development. These results suggest that T-6b may be useful for increasing oil production in biodiesel plants.

Microbial factories have been engineered to produce lipids from carbohydrate feedstocks for production of biofuels and oleochemicals. However, the best yields obtained up to now are still insufficient for commercial lipid production. The team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology led by Kangjian Qiao engineered 13 strains of Yarrowia lipolytica with synthetic pathways converting glycolytic NADH into the lipid precursors.

The best engineered strain achieved a 25% increase in production of fatty acid methyl esters/g-glucose over previously engineered yeast strains. The oxygen requirements of the highest producing strain were also reduced due to decreased NADH oxidization via aerobic respiration.

These results suggest that metabolic engineering could enable commercialization of microbial carbohydrate-based lipid production.

Fat storage-inducing transmembrane protein 2 (FIT2) is an endoplasmic reticulum-localized protein that plays an important role in lipid droplet (LD) formation in animal cells. However, no obvious homologue of FIT2 is found in plants.

Yingqi Cai of University of North Texas led a research team from various academic institutions to test the function of FIT2 in plant cells by expressing mouse (Mus musculus) FIT2 in Nicotiana tabacum suspension-cultured cells, Nicotiana benthamiana leaves and Arabidopsis thaliana plants.

The expression of FIT2 dramatically increased the number and size of LDs in leaves of N. benthamiana and Arabidopsis. Analysis confirmed the accumulation of neutral lipids in leaves. FIT2 also increased seed oil content by 13% in some overexpressing lines of Arabidopsis.

These results demonstrate that mouse FIT2 can promote LD accumulation in plants. These also suggest that FIT2 expression can be an effective strategy for studies regarding neutral lipid compartments in plant tissues for potential biofuel production.