New Engineered Yeast Improves Ethanol Production Process

Filed in archive Biofuel on December 18, 2006

Because I work for a renewable energy company that focuses on Bioethanol production (from cane) I know for a fact and have written numerous times about the many difficult aspects of putting together an ethanol distillery. One of those that I have mentioned is the fact that because the distillation process is highly toxic to the yeasts that are used for Bioethanol processing. So you could imagine the great promise of engineered microbes. And thankfully, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has worked on engineering the yeast's genome to address this.

Researchers from MIT have developed a new strain of yeast that will tolerate high levels of both ethanol and glucose. The effect is faster production of ethanol. Researchers from the MIT used gene transcription manipulation which in the yeast's DNA meant that certain genes could be turned on or off. With this development, the US may be able to top its 4 billion gallons per year output to displace some of its 140 billion gallons of gasoline demand per year. Read more here.