The discovery resulted from work completed by teams at UC Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to optimize sugar conversion yields by the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to produce bioethanol.
The scientists transferred cellodextrin transporters and an intracellular β-glucosidase identified in the plant biomass degrading filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa into a C5 utilizing yeast strain, which resulted in more efficient conversion of C5 and C6 sugars derived from plant biomass to bioethanol.
The inventors include PMB Associate Chair and Professor N. Louise Glass and Molecular and Cell Biology Professor Jamie H.D. Cate, as well as former Berkeley graduate students William Beeson and Jonathan Galazka, and former postdoctoral researcher Chaoguang Tian.
Read the full article at biomassmagazine.com.
Visit EBI online at energybiosciencesinstitute.org
Learn more about Professor N. Louise Glass at pmb.berkeley.edu/profile/nglass