Some plant biomass, like corn stover, is rich in hemicellulose, a compound that can be broken down to its major component sugar, xylose. Many strains of the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (common industrial yeast for ethanol fermentation) do not possess sufficient metabolic machinery to convert xylose to ethanol. Pichia stipitis is a yeast known to be good in converting xylose to ethanol under low oxygen environments. A research team from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) and the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (FPL), has reported that they have “sequenced and assembled the complete genome of P. stipitis. Published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the researchers found “unusual aspects in the genome organization”. The knowledge obtained from the study will be useful in the improvement of xylose metabolism in microorganisms, including in the industrial ethanol-fermenting strain, S. cerevisiae. It could also provide better opportunities for the larger utilization of hemicellulose-rich plant biomass as bioethanol feedstocks..