A joint research by scientists from Vanderbilt University, J. Craig Venter Institute and Waseda University (Japan) has found that manipulating the biological clock of cyanobacteria to remain in its daytime setting can boost the production of algal biofuel and other commercially valuable compounds.

Microalgae are widely used for the production of biofuels and high-value biomolecules. Scientists have entirely mapped the bioclock mechanism in cyanobacteria, which is the simplest bioclock found in nature. Detailed knowledge of the clock's structure has allowed researchers to determine how to switch the clock on and off.

Scientists now know that the algae's bioclock consists of three proteins: KaiA, KaiB and KaiC. In the study published in the journal Current Biology, the researchers discovered that the KaiA and KaiC components act as switches that turn the cell's daytime and nighttime genes on and off. To lock the algae's bioclock into its daylight configuration, they only needed to produce more KaiA by genetically upregulating its expression.

To demonstrate the effect of tricking cyanobacteria's bioclock on its ability to produce commercially important compounds, the researchers inserted a gene for human insulin in some of the cyanobacteria cells, a gene for a fluorescent protein (luciferase) in other cells and a gene for hydrogenase, an enzyme that produces hydrogen gas, in yet others. They found that the cells with the locked clocks produced 200 percent more hydrogenase, 500 percent more insulin and 700 percent more luciferase when grown in constant light than they did when the genes were inserted in cells with normally functioning clocks.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) through the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has awarded nearly $10 million to a consortium of academic, industry and government organizations led by Colorado State University (CSU) to study the use of beetle-killed trees in the Rockies as a sustainable bioenergy feedstock.

The consortium will explore recent advances in scalable thermochemical conversion technologies for the production of advanced liquid biofuel and co-products on-site.

One of the challenges in the utilization of beetle-killed wood for renewable fuel production is the fact that wood source is typically located in inaccessible areas with challenging topography, which increases harvest and transportation costs. In addition to technical barriers, environmental impacts, social issues and local policy constraints to using beetle-killed wood and other forest residues remain largely unexplored.

The Bioenergy Alliance Network of the Rockies (BANR), created by the CSU and its partners, will undertake comprehensive economic, environmental and social/policy assessment, and integrate research results into a web-based, user-friendly decision support system. The team is working with Cool Planet Energy Systems, whose prototype pyrolysis system can be tailored to the amount of feedstock available and thus can be deployed in close proximity to stands of beetle-killed timber. This localized production leads to significantly lower costs related to wood harvest and transportation.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have reported in the journal Molecular BioSystems the development of a chemical approach that can facilitate rapid development of enzyme blends for efficient conversion of plant biomass into fuels.

The PNNL study focused on a collection of enzymes produced by the fungus Trichoderma reesei, which can reduce the complex and tough plant structural material known as lignocellulose into fermentable sugars and eventually into fuels. As each enzyme attacks the lignocellulose differently, chemists are trying to combine the best ones to create a potent enzyme cocktail, which is a key to economically viable biomass-to-fuel conversion. To assess the effectiveness of the enzyme blend, scientists must either measure the overall performance of the mixture, or they must test the component enzymes one at a time to see how each reacts to different conditions like temperature, pressure and pH.

The PNNL team developed an activity-based protein profiling in which a chemical probe tracks precisely how each of dozens of enzymes reacts to changing conditions. This will allow  them to measure the activity of individual enzymes, as well as the overall mixture, in a single experiment. The chemical probe binds to the target enzymes and gives off information indicating just how active each of those enzymes is per time.

The new method potentially reduces the amount of work needed to develop efficient enzyme blends, which normally takes months, to only a day or two.

Researchers at the National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan) cooperating with a visiting scientist from Bar-Ilan University (Israel) have developed a microwave-based process which turns waste cooking oil into biodiesel in 10 seconds.

The team's technology, which can convert waste cooking oil into biodiesel and glycerol in around 10 to 40 seconds, uses microwave combined with strontium oxide as a catalyst for efficient conversion. The catalyst can be removed and recycled to carry out the same reaction at least 10 more times.

With this technology, the NCKU currently can process 100 kg of waste oil a day to produce biodiesel but this figure is expected to increase to several tons as they scale up production. The university is now in the process of applying for a patent for the technology and is seeking to scale up production with industry partners.