Researchers Tinker with Microbe Genome for Biogas Production

Near the University of California, Davis there is a set of giant vats filled with hungry microbes that live on cafeteria leftovers and lawn clippings, converting them into biogas--mostly methane and hydrogen--that can be burned to generate electricity or compressed into liquid to power specialized vehicles. Scientists will be sequencing the genomes of the microbes to allow them to figure out how these organisms perform their digestive tasks, and to suggest new ways to make more-productive bioreactors.

Faster and cheaper gene-sequencing methods have enabled microbiologists to study complex microbial communities. Scientists can isolate DNA from a drop of bioreactor sludge and generate the gene sequence for the entire microbial community. The Joint Genome Institute will use this approach to sequence the genomes of the microbes next year. The results should shed light on the types of microbes living in the bioreactor and on the types of genes that predominate. "We want to compare what kind of microbes are there at different conditions and try to figure out why one [set of conditions] works better than the other," says Martin Wu, a geneticist at UC Davis who will lead the genomics part of the project.

Read the news article at http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/18937/.