Project Results

About This Project

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Biofuels like ethanol have received much attention in
recent years as demand for cleaner renewable energy increases. Liquid fuels are vital for supplying the growing global energy demand. Conventional biofuel production centers around biomass like corn, sugar cane, and soy that is fed into factories for processing. This process can be expensive and the starting materials often compete for land with food stocks. Use of bio-ethanol is hindered by its low energy content and water absorption. Butanol provides comparable amounts of energy to gasoline, can be used in current infrastructure, burns substantially cleaner, but is difficult to produce conventionally and remains expensive. Emerging technologies are now facilitating high value chemical production at a fraction of the cost.

What is the significance of this project?

Our project will provide a cheaper way of producing the
high value chemical butanol that can initially use wood and paper waste products to provide a source of renewable liquid energy that will reduce our use of petroleum fuels. Our system will utilize microbial fuel production to convert cellulose, wood waste, into butanol. The use of ionic liquids to extract cellulose from plant material has greatly reduced costs. We will utilize an organism that lives in high ionic environments allowing us to reduce preprocessing, thereby reducing the cost of fermentation. By coupling the emerging technology of synthetic biology with a renewable source of feedstock, we can take responsibility for our energy needs while preserving our planet.

What are the goals of the project?

1. Engineer Haloferax volcanii to produce butanol from glucose.
2. Characterize the synthetic metabolic pathway and optimize through further engineering.
3. Present our findings at the iGEM competition and publish our results.