Bioethanol

The lack of an optimal microorganism for converting biomass into fuel ethanol has traditionally been seen as a major technical roadblock to developing a second generation ethanol production industry. The ideal microorganism should ferment both C-6 and C-5 sugars and in addition grow and function optimally in the challenging environment created by biomass pretreatment and the formation of ethanol which is toxic to the cell. The research objective is to mitigate these limitations through concerted application of evolutionary adaptation combined with quantitative evaluation of candidates and metabolic engineering. The current research focus is to develop a robust microbial strain for ethanol production from high dry matter pretreated biomass and hydrolysate. Mutagenesis and evolutionary adaptation are currently used with the objective to increase their tolerances to both hydrolysate inhibitors and ethanol. Primarily, yeast candidate strains are investigated for inhibitor detoxification and xylose conversion. Bacterial strains are investigated for ethanol tolerance and inhibitor tolerance.

Current projects