New Yeast With High Alcohol Tolerance Could Improve Biofuel Production
At the intriguing intersection of green tech and microbial genomics lies a new discovery that could make biofuel production more efficient and affordable. That discovery is a strain of yeast with above-average alcohol tolerance. Biofuels are made by fermenting crops, and when yeast is used to convert sugars into biomass, the fermentation can create familiar alcohol-based fuels like ethanol and isobutanol . Here’s the catch: if the fuel is too concentrated, the yeast begins to die. It would be more efficient to be able to produce highly concentrated batches, however. So University of Illinois Professor Yong-Su Jin set out to find a gene in yeast that can help it tolerate more alcohol. Jin studied the microbe most commonly used in ethanol production, Saccharomyces cerevisiae , and found not one, but four genes that boost yeast’s tolerance to ethanol and isobutanol. Now the challenge will be to breed yeast with these genes over-expressed. One of the genes in particular, INO1 , increased tolerance by 340% and could help produce up to 70% more ethanol per batch. It might not be as simple as it sounds though, since other genetic elements could interact with the identified genes in a way that hasn’t yet been tested. Still, it’s a discovery that could significantly improve biofuel production in the future, especially as scientists begin to breed yeast with this knowledge. Photo credit: Flickr via Steve Jurvetson
Read more from the original source….